FIELD VOLES IN THESSALtf. 317 



the beautiful vale of Tempe. The soil is extremely fertile, heavy, 

 and in many places reddish loam, which is often inundated by the 

 Peneios in winter over a large extent of country. These inun- 

 dations are connected with the frequent occurrence of intermittent 

 fever in the low-lying districts. The whole plain is treeless, 

 except near Velestino, the first station on the line from Volos to 

 Larissa, which may be due to a large number of springs which 

 rise there. This vast fertile plain is for the most part the property 

 of large landholders. Some of these gentlemen own as much 

 as a hundred thousand acres of land. The population is very 

 scanty. The villages are mostly small and unimportant. The 

 houses are built close together in such a manner as to encompass 

 the much larger mansion of the owner like a wall. Every peasant 

 has a certain portion of the area allotted to him for cultivation, 

 and receives a share of the harvest in return for his labour. The 

 comparatively small number of inhabitants is of course insufficient 

 to cultivate these extensive flats. Very large districts, perhaps 

 more than two -thirds of the country, lie fallow. The fallow lands 

 are used to pasture large flocks of sheep, goats, and herds of oxen. 



About every three years the same tracts of land come into 

 cultivation. There is no artificial manuring of the soil. In these 

 extensive fallow fields the voles can multiply undisturbed. Last 

 year the harvest was a good one, for the first time since Thessaly 

 again became Greek territory. The Field Voles, which have 

 always been plentiful in Thessaly (the ancient Greeks had their 

 Apollo Smintheus, or Myoktonos, the Mouse-destroying God), 

 multiplied considerably on account of the good harvest. The 

 following winter (1891 - 92) was very mild, and did them no harm, 

 and therefore at the end of February, when a warm spring set in, 

 they appeared in larger numbers than for twenty-five years 

 previously. The Station-master at Velestino, M. Amira, was 

 the first to call public attention to the appearance of immense 

 numbers of voles at the end of February. The notion of their 

 sudden invasion of the Thessalian plain is out of the question. 



As soon as public attention was directed to their appearance, 

 it was confirmed by reports received from very different and 

 widely-separated localities, in the Plain of Larissa. These 

 simultaneous reports led to the notion that there must have been 

 an invasion from without, but this was certainly not the case. 

 At the beginning of March the voles were only beginning to 



