422 
Publications of Interest to Agriculturists. 
the Committee are of the opinion that such measures, carried out 
systematically at an early stage of the outbreak, would be most 
effective, and they express a very natural surprise that, in view of 
the experience of 1875-6, no concerted attempts were made by 
the farmers to destroy the voles the moment their numbers appeared 
to be upon the increase. 
Of the remedial measures rejected by the Committee a few words 
may be said. 
The pitfalls, which were used with considerable success in the 
Forest of Dean in 1813-14, were impracticable in the present case 
on account of the nature and extent of the land infested. So also 
were the remedies, sometimes successfully tried on the Continent, of 
rolling, inundating, or fumigating the runs. Poisoned grain was 
partially effective, but the area to be dealt with was too large, and 
the attendant risk to other forms of life too great. 
Great interest attaches to that portion of the report which deals 
with Professor Loeffler’s method of destroying voles by endeavouring 
to communicate to them “ mouse typhus,” or Bacillus typhi murium. 
The chairman and secretary of the Committee most wisely instituted 
inquiries on the spot into the results obtained by Dr. Loeffler in 
Thessaly, and the conclusions they arrived at did not favour the 
adoption of his method in Scotland. It is open to one fatal objec- 
tion, namely, that the disease sought to be communicated is not a 
contagious one, and it is highly unlikely that in the wild state, and 
surrounded by abundance of vegetable food, any considerable 
number of the voles would contract the disease by feeding on the 
dead bodies of their poisoned brethren. 
The method, moreover, is a very expensive one, and the virus 
loses its destructive properties in eight days after its preparation. 
Still, if mouse typhus were contagious, the trial of the remedy, even 
in a limited area, might have very far-spreading results. As matters 
are, however, all that can be said in its favour is that the freshly 
prepared bacillus is a tolerably certain, though somewhat dilatory, 
poison, which possesses the one advantage of being innocuous to 
other forms of life. 
Readers of the article on “ Vermin of the Farm ” in the Journal 
(Vol. III. 3rd series, Part II. 1892) will remember that, in the 
Editorial Note on p. 237, no greater success was predicted for Di\ 
Loeffler’s method than had attended a similar endeavour to exter- 
minate rabbits in Australia. In that Note the extreme folly of in- 
discriminate destruction of the natural enemies of field-voles was 
strongly insisted on, and this subject has not been overlooked in 
the report under notice. Such enemies are there divided into two 
groups, thus : — 
Vole-killers, harmless, or nearly so, 
to sheep, crops, and game 
Owls of all sorts. 
Buzzards. 
Kestrels and the smaller seagulls. 
Vole-killers hurtful in other ways. 
Foxes. 
Ravens. 
Carrion and hooded crows. 
Great black-backed gulls, and adders. 
