Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1886 — Plagues of Mice. [ARTICLE]

Plagues of Mice.

At intervals of a few years the Brazilian colony of Dourenco suffers from a remarkable visitation of field-mice, the latest of which, in 1870, has just been described by Dr. H. Yon Ihring. These creatures, ordinarily not numerous, appeared in enormous quantities, and in a few days destroyed the fields of corn, potatoes, clover, oats, barley, ’gourds, pumpkins, and even weeds, actually damaging houses to a considerable extent and ruining furniture and clothing. The periodical occurrences of these plagues seems to be due to the chief food Bupply of the mice, the seeds of the bamboo-grass, which at regular intervals of six to thirty years matures over a large territory, aud then disappears. The field-mice increase so rapidly that, if all the conditions which keep them in check were removed, a single pear would bear a progeny of 23,000 individuals in a single summer, and every living thing upon the earth would bo consumed in a half-dozen years.