ON EPIDEMICS AMONGST MfCE. 307 



of pounds -were spent on their destruction. Agricultural Societies and 

 Governments were implored to seek ways and means of staying the plague. 



11 Sometimes these voles attack plantations. In 1813 and 1814 they caused 

 so much destruction in England among freshly-planted trees of one or two 

 years' growth as to cause serious alarm.-- Throughout wide districts the 

 little animals not only devoured the hark of all the saplings, but also peeled 

 the roots of many oaks and chestnuts that were already fairly grown, and 

 thus destroyed them. The Government was forced to take the most 

 energetic measures to repair this enormous damage. 



" Unfortunately, man is powerless against these voles. All the means 

 of destruction which have yet been devised seem insufficient to check the 

 inordinate multiplication of these greedy hosts ; only Providence and the 

 useful predaceous animals, to which man is so hostile, can help him. 

 "Borers" have been used with good results, with which, where the soil 

 permits it, holes are made in the ground,' 12 — 18 cm. in circumference, 

 and 60 cm. deep. When the voles fall in, instead of burrowing their way 

 out, they devour each other. When the fields were being ploughed, 

 children followed with sticks, and destroyed as many as possible. Smoke 

 has been driven into the burrows, poisoned grain thrown in, whole fields 

 saturated with a decoction of strychnine or spurge, Euphorbia cyprissias 

 (mit einem Absud von Brecknuss oder Wolfsmilch). In short, every means 

 has been adopted to get rid of this terrible pest; but in general all these 

 methods have proved nearly useless, and some of them, especially poisoning, 

 highly dangerous. The most efficacious poison not only destroys all the 

 mice in a field, but likewise their worst enemies, and consequently 

 our friends— foxes, martens, stoats, weasels, buzzards, owls, and rooks; 

 besides partridges, hares, and domestic animals, from pigeons to horses and 

 oxen, — a sufficient reason for abstaining altogether from the use of poison. 

 It is painful to all naturalists and lovers of animals to see the enemies of 

 the mice, as in 1872, poisoned and destroyed, instead of cared for and 

 protected. Short-sighted people — farmers who cared more for hare-hunting 

 than for making the best use of the land — were delighted when they found, 

 besides dead mice, hundreds of poisoned rooks, buzzards, owls, foxes, 

 weasels, and stoats ; but they did not consider what mischief they had 

 entailed upon themselves in their senseless efforts to destroy the voles. It 

 was not the destruction of the useful but despised mouse-killers that 

 concerned them, but when hares, partridges and domestic animals were 

 also poisoned, they were at last induced to give up the use of poison. Till 

 then, the warnings of far-seeing advisers were disregarded. The warnings 

 which they had given, both verbally and in print, that laying poison iu the 

 fields might perhaps benefit the infected land, but not agriculturists, were 

 not appreciated till too late. Besides poison, smoking out the voles was 



* This was in the Forest of Dean and in the New Forest* 



