144 Rey. 8. B. Fairbank—The Ravages of Rats and Mice  [No. a 
of the unripe ears, and, although the grain was still in the milk stage of its 
development, when dried it was fit for food. They thus saved an eighth 
or a sixteenth of the crop they had expected to harvest. The rats also 
attacked the growing wheat and much of that was harvested while the 
grain was in the milk, but the dried unripe grain was shrivelled, small in 
quantity and poor in quality. Gardens of egg-plants and other irrigated 
vegetables were found by the rats and the fruit was eaten by them while 
it was stillimmature. Even carrots were eaten, and so was lucerne in the 
hot season, when their supply of haraydli grass (Cynodon dactylon), which 
is their usual food, was exhausted. The patches of melons and other cw- 
curbitacee that are grown in the moist sand of river beds during the hot 
season, were nightly visited by the rats, and each melon was eaten before it 
was ripe enough for the use of man. 
These ravages extended over several thousand square miles. The 
Parner, Shrigonde and Karzat taliks and part of the Nagar talak in the 
Ahmednagar Collectorate, the Ind4pir talik of the Pina Collectorate, all 
the Sholapur Collectorate and the northern third of the Kaladgi Collectorate, 
as well as the adjoining Native States, were ravaged, though the crops were 
not so much injured along the N. EH. and 8S. W. borders of this belt as they 
were in the middle of it. How far the plague extended to the EH. and 8. EH. 
of the region specified above I have not been able to learn. Groups of villages 
in other parts of the Ahmednagar Collectorate, especially to the N. E. of 
Nagar, suffered in the same way. The region particularly specified extends 
from N. W. to S. E. for about 175 miles, and is from 40 to 80 miles wide. 
I travelled through a large part of it in May and June, and found that 
most of the villagers had already consumed what the rats had left, and in 
whole groups of villages there was no grain that could be purchased which 
had been raised there. All that I could find was imported grain and was 
mostly the flat kind of Sorghum that is brought from Jabalptr. The 
people had been living, for weeks, mostly on wild seeds and sweet potatoes 
(using the leaves as well as the roots) which had been raised by irrigation. 
Near Sholéptir there was some bdjart (Holcus spicatus) left of the kharif 
(autumn) crop of 1878, which was for sale ; and ndchant (Eleusine coracana), 
to the use of which the people were unaccustomed, was also brought from 
the Madras side and exposed for sale. The wild seeds of Indigofera lini- 
folia, I. cordifolia and I. glandulosa were also sold, the price being about 
two-thirds the price of Sorghum millet. The seeds of some malvaceous 
weeds, such as Abutilon indicum and Hibiscus sp. ?, were also used for food, 
but I found none exposed for sale. Ilooked in the fields for specimens 
of the’ Tradescantias and Commelinas, the seeds of which were prized 
so highly in the famine of 1877, but could find none. It would seem that 
they had been nearly extirpated. 
