Small Marauders
We have heard a good deal of the need of campaigns against rats, which certainly do nothing but harm from man's point of view, and are now grimly numerous; but in justice it must be said that the crimes of other races are often attributed to the brown rat. In one particular case the culprit was found to be the meadow vole, a very engaging little creature, but its numbers, which rise and fall with strange regularity, may make it a real pest, and it has a more than rat-like skill in pene- trating to stores of food. Students of such periodic rises and falls in population are anxious to know whether any dormict have been seen in this or that neighbourhood. Their hibernacula are, of course, not easily detected, but there seems reason to believe that the race is progressively diminishing. Though someone complained that " it had no habits," it is an engaging and nearly harmless animal.
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