THE PLAGUE OF FIELD VOLES IN SCOTLAND. 129 



"About Hallontide last past (1581), iu the marshes of Danesey Hundred, 

 in a place called South Minster, in the county of Essex . . . there sodainlie 

 appeared an iufinite number of mice, which overwhelming the whole earth 

 in the said marshes, did sheare and gnaw the grass by the rootes, spoyling 

 and tainting the same with their venimous teeth, in such sort that the 

 cattell which grazed thereon were smitten with a murraine and died 

 thereof; which vermine by policie of man could not be destroyed, till at 

 the last there flocked together such a number of owles as all the shire was 

 not able to yield, whereby the marshholders were shortly delivered from the 

 vexation of the said mice." 



Stowe, quoting this account in 1615, adds, "the like of this 

 was also in Kent." Childrey, in his * Britannia Baconica,' 1660, 

 records another outbreak in Essex in 1648, and, referring to the 

 former plague in 1581, remarks that it took place in " an extreme 

 dripping warm year and a mild and moist winter." 



Lilly mentions an invasion as having taken place in Essex in 

 1660 ; and Fuller, writing in 1662, says:— 



" I wish the sad casualties may never return which lately have happened 

 in this county (Essex), the one in 1581, in the Hundred of Dengy; the 

 other in 1648 in the Hundred of Rochford and Isle of Foulness (rented in 

 part by two of tny credible parishioners, who attested it, having paid dear 

 for the truth thereof), when an army of mice, resting in the anthills, as 

 conies in burrows, shaved off the grass at the bare roots, which withering 

 to dung, was infectious to cattle. In March following numberless flocks of 

 owls from all parts flew thither and destroyed them, which otherwise had 

 ruined the country if continuing another year." 



In 1754, as appears by the * London Magazine' for that year, 

 and the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (p. 215), a similar occurrence 

 was noted at Downham Market, Norfolk. 



Montagu, in the Supplement to his ' Ornithological Dictionary' 

 (1813), quotes Mr. Anstice's description of a plague of mice a few 

 years previously at Bridgewater, followed in like manner by nights 

 of Short-eared Owls. 



Other outbreaks occurred in the Forest of Dean and the New 

 Forest in 1813-14, and are fully described in a letter from the 

 late Lord Glenbervie, Surveyor-General of Woods, printed in the 

 Appendix to this Report. In 1836 the Forest of Dean was 

 again infested, but there is some reason to suppose that on 

 this occasion part at least of the mischief was attributable to the 

 Long-tailed Field Mouse, Mus sylvaticus. 



