TJditorial Note. 
235 
visitation of 1875-76 appears to have attained its maximum 
intensity in the cluster of farms at the head of Borthwick 
Water, which falls into the Teviot three miles above Hawick. 
Here the outbreak formed the subject of an inquiry conducted 
by the Teviotdale Farmers’ Club, and many of the details then 
recorded are receiving confinnation in connection with the 
present trouble. The numbers of the voles, which had for several 
seasons been steadily increasing, were augmented in the mild 
winter of 1875-76, and in the ensuing spring they made their 
presence unmistakably felt on the doomed farms. Between 
February and April they completely destroyed the pasturage of 
the bogland in Borthwick Water, and were then driven to feeding 
on the bents. 
The means resorted to for their extermination were not 
very skilful, and the remedy which had been found so serviceable 
in the New Forest — that of digging holes into which the voles 
fell and were captured — was not adopted in time. The abundance 
of prey, however, induced a large increase in the number of 
hawks, foxes, and weasels; buzzards, which had long been 
strangers to the district, again came on the scene, whilst the 
short- and long-eared owls appeared in numbers. By mid- April 
the voles had so completely devoured the herbage that they 
began to suffer from starvation, and the occurrence of severe 
frost, with some snow, about the middle of the month, completed 
their discomfiture, so that by the end of May they had mostly 
disappeared. 
A careful inspection of the infected region led to the con- 
clusion that fully one-third of the pastures had been destroyed. 
The true bog-grasses especially, on which the sheep mainly 
depend in April and May, had been eaten down to the roots. 
The ground was strewn with dry stalks and blades, mixed with 
tufts of hair, limbs, and other remains of the marauders. The 
sheep were in a deplorable state. Many had died, and the 
emaciated ewes, too weak to make good nurses, suckled their 
lambs with difficulty. Numbers of the latter consequently 
perished, and the survivors were poor and weakly. Besides the 
loss of animals by death, other disastrous results were felt in 
the impaired condition of the survivors, the diminished sale of 
lambs, draft ewes, and wool, and the inadequacy of the rising 
stock to keep up the “ hirsel ” to its full producing extent. It 
was reasonably estimated that on the 10,000 acres of the Borth- 
wick Water pasture alone the damage done could not be valued 
at less than 5,0001. 
The causes of the outbreak were attributed partly to the 
succession of mild winters which had immediately preceded that 
