HISTORIC INVASIONS <>| mm 
nil possible assistance. The} set out in their migration westward. 
From the river Pengin they go southward and about the middle of 
Jul} reach Oshotska and Judoma, a trad of amazing extent Thej 
return again in October, The Kamtschatkans are greatly alarmed 
nt their migrations, as they presage rainy seasons and an unsuccessful 
chase; but <>n their return, expresses are senl t<> all parts with the 
good iH'\\ -." 
Visitations of voles have not been infrequent in the history of 
the ( >1<1 World. The earliest records of them are in the Bible ' and 
in tin* work- of Homer, Herodotus, and A.ristotle. So serious did 
the ( rreeks consider plagues of field mice thai in their pantheism they 
had a mouse god i Apollo Smintheus), who was invoked to avert the 
evil. 
[nvasions of held mice have not been rare in Great Britain and 
the Eurasian continent. Blasius records serious outbreaks on the 
Lowri- Rhine in the twenties.* Brehm, quoting Lenz, gives an 
account of one in 1856 and of another in Rhenish Hesse in L861. 
.in himself observed hordes of the animal- in L872 and l s 7o on 
the sandy pjains of Brandenburg 'and in the rich corn land- of Lower 
Saxony, Thuringia, and Hesse. d The chroniclers of England — Hol- 
inshed, Stow. Childrey, Lilly. Fuller, and others — record outbreaks 
of mice in Esses and Kent, L581, and again in Esses in L648 and L660. 
Later plagues occurred in part- of England in 1745, L754, 1814, l s -- ; ~>. 
l s -"»(;. and 1803 l x »>7. Severe outbreaks took place in Scotland in 
L825, 1864, 1876, and L892, the last so serious in it- effects upon the 
sheep industry that the British Board of Agriculture appointed a 
special committee to investigate it. The report of this committee 4 
is the most complete and important contribution to our knowledge of 
Held mice thus far published. 
A large-portion of Hungary was devastated by field mice in 1875 
and 1876. In l s 7r» they were observed to 1>»' very numerous in cer- 
tain districts, and by the spring of l v 7«'. they fairly swarmed in 
cultivated fields, so that the pea-ant- "doubted whether they had 
sprung from the earth or fallen from the clouds." They devoured 
grain, root-, and growing vegetation— corn, potatoes, turnips, and 
lucern. In the fall they attacked vineyards and shrubbery, and 
History of Quadrupeds, by Thomas Pennant, 3d edition, vol. II, p. 195, 1 T*. •::. 
And the cities and fields in the midst of that region produced mice and 
there was great confusion and dearth in tin- city." I Samuel, v.. 6 (Vulgate 
rersion. » 
' Naturgescbichte der Saugethiere Deutschlandjg, von Johann Beinricfa Bla- 
sins. p. 386, 1857. 
*A. E. Brehm. Thierlehen: Saugethiere, \.»i. •_> p. 390, 1^77. 
• Report of the Departmental Committee on a Plague "t* Field Yoh's in Scot- 
land. London, 1803. 
