288 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



perished, and upwards of thirty were carried home insensible. 

 The number of Sheep that were lost was beyond calculation. 

 Whole flocks were overwhelmed with snow, and their bodies 

 were not recovered till the snow disappeared. The greater 

 part of the rivers on which the storm was most deadly run into 

 the Solway Frith, on which there is a place called the "Beds of 

 Esk," where the tide throws out and leaves whatever is carried 

 into it by the rivers. When the flood after the storm subsided 

 there were found on that place, and the shore adjacent, 1840 

 Sheep, 9 Black Cattle, 3 Horses, 2 Men, 1 Woman, 45 Dogs, and 

 180 Hares, besides a number of "meaner animals."* The herd 

 of Deer in Martindale Forest was estimated to number about 

 three hundred head, but about fifty succumbed to the hardships 

 of the terrible winter of 1893-94. t The following instance 

 appertains partly and largely to the direct action of man, but, 

 as cold was the original enemy, it is recorded here in the words 

 of Mr. Baillie-Grohman. In a severe blizzard which swept over 

 Colorado in the last week of January, 1893, a band of about one 

 thousand Wapiti became imprisoned by the snow on a high and 

 heavily timbered mesa in the mountains near Steamboat Springs. 

 Ranchmen, prospectors, and hide -hunters, on hearing of the 

 windfall, "waded in," killing many with clubs, as the local 

 papers reported, and I believe not a single beast was allowed to 

 escape. t According to Dr. Altum, a German forester, "the 

 most terrible enemies of Mice are not other animals, but such 

 sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year. Alterna- 

 tions of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless 

 quantities ; one single sudden change can reduce thousands of 

 Mice to the number of a few individuals." He also states that 

 a succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the 

 exodus of the Pine-moth (Bombyx pi?ii) destroy it to incredible 

 amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths dis- 

 appeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights. § 

 Even fish suffer from a like cause. Col. Custance tells us that 

 in Salmon rivers a very severe frost has been known to affect 



* Cf. Low, ' Domesticated Animals of the Brit. Islands,' pp. 106-7. 

 f Eev. H. A. Macpherson, ' Bed Deer,' p. 30. 

 I ' Fifteen Years' Sport and Life,' &c, p. 33. 



§ Quoted by Prince Kvopotkin, * Nineteenth Century,' vol. xxviii. pp. 716- 

 17. 



