Voles, Mice and Lemmings

Abstract

IN his preface, Dr. Elton tells us that: “The materials of this book have been assembled slowly for sixteen years. ... The first part is a panorama of vole and mouse plagues in those countries for which records are available. The second part describes the vole and mouse fluctuations that occur in Great Britain and Scandinavia, and the methods developed at Oxford for the study of population dynamics in the field and laboratory. The third and fourth parts contain the history of similar fluctuations in Northern Labrador and Ungava that have an important influence upon the fur trade and the life of the natives.” It may be said at once that the book is a great magazine of facts, a witness to the vast amount of useful work that has already been accomplished by Dr. Elton ' and his colleagues in the Bureau of Animal Population at Oxford, and it is enlivened by many a bright flash from the author. Nevertheless, it is not an easy book to review. The first two parts are excellent. But the reviewer feels, after reading them with great attention, that Parts 3 and 4 want pulling together; it would be worth while coaxing Dr. Elton later on, when he has forgotten the details and the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company and the oMoravian missions, to write a little essay on this part of his subject.

Voles, Mice and Lemmings

Problems in Population Dynamics. By Charles Elton. Pp. vii + 496. (Oxford: Clarendon Press ; London: Oxford University Press, 1942.) 30s. net.