MIGRATION OF RATS. 
102 
the smooth horsetail (equisetum limosum). This com 
stituted the food of the creatures, and the noise made 
by their champing it we could distinctly hear in the 
evening at many yards’ distance. They were shot by 
dozens daily ; yet the survivors seemed quite regardless 
of the noise, the smoke, the deaths, around them. Be- 
fore the winter, this great herd disappeared, and so 
entirely evacuated the place, that a few years after I 
could not obtain a single specimen. They did not dis- 
perse, for the animal is seldom found in the neighbor- 
hood, and no dead bodies were observed. They had 
certainly made this place a temporary station in their 
progress from some other; but how such large com- 
panies can change their situations unobserved in their 
transits, is astonishing. Birds can move in high regions 
and in obscurity, and are not commonly objects of 
notice ; but quadrupeds can travel only on the ground, 
and would be regarded with wonder, when in great 
numbers, by the rudest peasant.* 
That little animal the water shrew (sorex fodiens) 
appears to be but partially known, but is probably more 
generally diffused than we imagine. The common 
shrew in particular seasons gambols through our hedge- 
rows,. squeaking and rustling about the dry foliage, and 
is observed by every one ; but the water shrew inhabits 
places that secrete it from general notice, and appears 
to move only in the evenings, which occasions its being 
so seldom observed. That this creature was an occa- 
* As an event connected with the subject of temporary augmenta- 
tion and diminution of creatures, I may be pardoned for noting the 
predominant increase of sex in some years. The most remarkable 
instance, that I remember of late, was in 1825. How far it extended 
I do not know, but for many miles round us we had in that year 
scarcely any female calves born. Dairies of forty or fifty cows pro- 
duced not more than five or six, those of inferior numbers, in the 
same proportion, and the price of female calves for rearing was 
greatly augmented. In the wild state, an event like this would have 
considerable influence upon the usual product of some future herd. 
In the ensuing spring, we had in the village an extraordinary instance 
of fecundity in the sheep afforded us, one farmer having an increase 
of sixteen lambs front five ewes, four of which produced three each, 
and one brought forth four; however, only a small portion of these 
little creatures lived to maturity. 
