y to forty metres and more. These runs are
connected with the surface by vertical holes of about five centimetres
in diameter. In many places four, five, and more holes have led to the
same run. In such cases there is generally, not far off, an
enlargement for the nest, lined with finely-ground vegetable material,
where the young are produced and reared. In front of newly-opened
holes the earth, which has been thrown far out, forms smooth hillocks.
There were many well-defined and well-trodden paths on the ground, by
which the Voles pass from one hole to another. They are never seen out
of their holes by day, not even in places where the entire ground is
riddled with holes like a sieve. They do not come out in search of
food till the evening; even then not many are to be seen, but the
peculiar squeaking noise they make is to be heard everywhere. Next day
all sorts of freshly-severed plants are to be found in the holes.
Stalks of corn they manipulate by standing on their hind legs and
gnawing through the stalk; when this is bitten off they drag it into
their holes to devour it there, sometimes making it smaller. They do
their work with amazing rapidity. One evening a field was visited
which was to be mowed next day, but when the labourers came in the
morning they found nothing to cut. The Voles had destroyed the entire
crop in a single night. A miller in the neighbourhood of Velestino
reported that he went to his field early one morning, cut a measure of
corn, loaded it on his ass, and brought it to his mill. When he
returned to his mill with a second load he found scarcely a vestige of
the first remaining. Thinking it had been stolen he kept watch for the
thief; but suddenly, to his great astonishment, hosts of Voles
appeared and set to work to carry off the second load." Such facts as
these recorded by Loeffler are by no means a merely recent phenomenon;
Aristotle was familiar with the devastations of the Voles, and wrote
that "some small farmers, having one day observed that their corn was
ready for harvest, when they went the following day to cut their corn,
found it all eaten." Other ancient writers record similar facts.[50]

[49] _Centralblatt f. Bak. u. Parasitenkunde_, July 1892,
and _Zoologist_, September 1892.

[50] _Zoologist_, May 1893. It may be added that the
Scottish Vole, which was so destructive about the same time,
does not burrow to a depth like the Thessaly Vole, but liv