In many places
their number is so incalculable that but very little of the
corn-crop is left to the farmer; and so rapid is their mode of
proceeding that sometimes a small farmer will one day observe that
it is time for reaping, and on the following morning, when he takes
his reapers afield, he finds his entire crop devoured. Their
disappearance is unaccountable: in a few days not a mouse will there
be to be seen. And yet in the time before these few days men fail to
keep down their numbers by fumigating and unearthing them, or by
regularly hunting them and turning in swine upon them; for pigs, by
the way, turn up the mouse-holes by rooting with their snouts. Foxes
also hunt them, and the wild ferrets in particular destroy them, but
they make no way against the prolific qualities of the animal and
the rapidity of its breeding. When they are super-abundant, nothing
succeeds in thinning them down except the rain; but after heavy
rains they disappear rapidly.
In a certain district of Persia when a female mouse is dissected
the female embryos appear to be pregnant. Some people assert, and
positively assert, that a female mouse by licking salt can become
pregnant without the intervention of the male.
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