66 THE MAMMALS, REPTILES, AND FISHES OF ESSEX.
enemies. The Short-eared Owl {Otus brachyotos) is a great
destroyer of them.
In another part of this work (see under Mus sylvaticus, p,
60), I have referred to plagues of mice in Essex.
This subject has received attention from Mr. Miller Christy
(Birds of Essex, 1890, p. 157), and has been made the theme
of a paper by Mr. E. A. Fitch (Essex Nat., vol. iii., p. 178),
wherein several interesting quotations from old authors, re-
specting the depredations of the Short-tailed Vole, are given.
Holinshed says (Chronicles, [1586], vol. iii., p. 1315):
" About Hallowtide last past [1580], in the marishes of Danesie
Hundred, in a place called Southminster, in the Countie of Essex, a
strange thing happened : there suddenlie appeared an infinite multi-
tude of mice, which, overwhelming the whole earth in the said
marishes, did sheare and gnaw the grasse by the roots, spoiling and
tainting the same with their venemous teeth, in such sort that the
cattell which grased thereon were smitten with a murreine, and died
thereof; which vermine by policie of man could not be destroied,
till now at the last it came to passe that there flocked together all about
the same marishes such a number of owles as all the shire was not
able to yeeld; whereby the marsh holders were shortlie deliuered
from the vexation of the said mice."
Stow, in his Annales (1605, p. 1166), makes the same
statement, evidently from the same authority. Speed also
relates (Theatre of the Empire of Great Britiane, 1676, fo., p. 31)
the same occurrences, with his own quaint moralising upon it :
" But lest we should exceed measure in commending, or the
people repose their trust in the soile ; behold what God can doe to
frustrate both in a moment, and that by His meanest creatures :
for in our age and remembrance, the year of Christ, 1581, an
Army of Alice so over-ran the marshes in Dengey Hundred, neer
unto South-minster in this County, that they shore the grass to the
very roots, and so tainted the same with their venomous teeth, that
a great Murrain fell upon the Cattel which grased thereon, to the
great loss of their owners."