206 



MAMMALS. 



The method followed to extirpate Eats, which is mentioned by 

 MacGillivray and Jesse as having been tried successfully in the 

 slaughter-houses of Paris, has always struck us as the most reliable 

 method yet imagined, and we think it might with advantage be 

 employed at the present day at almost any farm-steading in the 

 country. By forming a properly made rat-pit of cement, allowing 

 free ingress and egress, and feeding heavily for a time, then 

 suddenly closing up the various passages, immense destruction can 

 be done. In this way Mr. Jesse relates that M. Dusaursois 

 destroyed 16,050 rats in the space of a month, and in one night's 

 massacre the dead amounted to 2650 (see MacGillivray's History 

 of British Quadrupeds, Naturalist's Library, p. 247). 



' This bold marauder,' writes Mr. K. Thomson, ' whose hand 

 has been against every man, and every man's hand against him, 

 etc. . . . has generally got the credit of exterminating his smaller 

 and less powerful relative — the Black Eat.' 



The general belief and expressed opinion in our district is, that 

 the Brown Eat first made its appearance on or near the coast at 

 Banff, and at others of the coast towns of the Moray Firth, and 

 rapidly spread inland. 



Sub.family ARVIGOLINM. 



Arvicola agrestis, De Selys. Common Field Vole. 



This is a common species everywhere in our area, though there 

 has been no plague of them, to our knowledge, as has recently 

 been the case in the south of Scotland. It may be that owls 

 are more numerous and undisturbed ; at least we find that keepers 

 are less inclined to kill these birds now than formerly. That the 

 result of the ordinarj^ increase of micro-mammalia, or an abnormal 

 increase owing to dry and suitable breeding seasons, causes a 

 corresponding increase of owls, we have abundant evidence in 

 the history of the plague of 1892, as written by Mr. Adair 

 in the Annals of Scottish Natural History. A naked variety was 

 caught at Elgin in 1850 {auct. Eev. G. Gordon, Zoologist, 1850, 

 p. 2763). 



Amongst the earliest records we have of the Field Vole is one in 

 MS. by James Hoy in a copy of Berkenhout's Outlines of the Natural 



