132 J. B. CLELAND. 
appears that towards the end of 1904 and in the early 
months of 1905 millions of mice swept over the western 
plains of Queensland and invaded the central districts of 
South Australia. The Sydney paper quotes a correspond- 
ent of the Adelaide Advertiser, for an interesting account 
of this wave of mice as it reached Goyder’s Lagoon. They 
ate the pack bags, worried sleepers and gnawed their ears, 
and took possession of nearly everything in the homestead. 
Three hundred mice were poisoned in one kitchen in a 
night and 2000 in a few days. When this correspondent 
wrote, the mice had disappeared, the disappearance having 
been aided by a marsupial mouse-catcher. 
Mr. C. J. Cameron, J.P., of Roseville, Sydney, has kindly 
supplied me with the following personal recollection of a 
mouse visitation in 1903, which is evidently part of the same 
‘‘pnlague’’ referred to by Lucas and Le Souef. He says:— 
‘‘Some few months after the drought broke up mice ap- 
peared in small numbers, and in a few weeks’ time were 
to be seen in myriads, not only in the inhabited parts, but 
through the bush, even in districts that were purely pas- 
toral and a considerable distance from any agricultural 
country. This plague increased very rapidly for a time, and 
disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The mice ranged 
in size from that of an ordinary mouse to almost the size 
of a full-grown rat; and varied in colour, some being that 
of an ordinary mouse, but in the majority of instances they 
were varied colours of yellow, black, and piebald with all 
kinds of stripes. 
‘In the pastoral area where I saw them, viz., the Western 
District of this State, they naturally did not do the same 
amount of damage as in the agricultural areas, where, of 
course, they destroyed stacks and grain. In the pastoral 
areas the damage was confined to the homesteads, where 
