208 



MAMMALS. 



Mr. Eagle-Clarke has obtained specimens of this species from 

 the late Dr. Gordon, which are now in the Museum of Science and 

 Art, Edinburgh, as also specimens of the next mentioned. 



Arvicola glareolus, Schreb. Red Field Vole. 



At a time when the depredations of Voles have drawn the attention 

 of special Parliamentary Commissions, we may be pardoned, 

 perhaps, for quoting pretty fully what has been said regarding 

 this closely allied form by the late Eev. Dr. Gordon as applicable 

 to any large extent to the north-eastern counties of Scotland. 

 Dr. Gordon says, in his Fauna of Moray, -p. 15: — 'This species 

 abounds in the neighbourhood of Cawdor, where it has been 

 known for several years' — ie, at date of 1844 — 'to be most 

 destructive to the newly-planted larches. No sooner are the 

 plants put into the ground than a single night is sufficient to 

 show the ravages, and a few days will scarcely leave a plant 

 over whole acres but what is more or less injured. The chief 

 object of attack at this season — December — seems to be the 

 newly-formed bud, which they eat out with the greatest nicety, 

 often leaving the outer scales attached like a lid, after the kernel, 

 as it were, is gone. When the branchlets are too slender to bear 

 the animal to the buds at their extremity they are gnawed across, 

 and, falling to the ground, yield up their treasures an easy prey to 

 the little robber. Mr. Black, the forester at Cawdor Castle, says 

 when the winter sets in the stems are often denuded of their bark 

 under the snow, and of course the plants are seriously damaged, if 

 not killed. The injury sustained by the extraction of so many of 

 the buds, and by the lopping off of so many of the branches, and 

 most frequently the leading one, is such that many plants never 

 recover it, but grow up cramped, bushy, and deformed, instead of 

 the tall, straight, and handsome forms so natural to the larch.' 

 Dr. Gordon then continues : — ' In the dry, bare moors the Red 

 Voles are seldom met with, and consequently the plants there 

 escape. They are chiefly congregated in the large hollows which 

 are thickly strewed with boulders, angular fragments of the sub- 

 jacent rock and debris, and deeply covered with fog (mosses), 

 decayed grass, and the tangled roots of juniper, whins, broom, 

 and the smaller willows. Mr. Black mentions that upwards of 



