DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18641, 20 May 1932, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

A Palestinian newspaper tells of the ravages of field mice Mice Plague and ihe attempts to in get rid of this pest, Palestine. which is destroying the wheat. Because of the general lack -of heavy rains and the mildness of tho early winter, -the weather conditions have been especially favourable for the mice, but the farmers have suffered both -in ttie north and -the south. The Department of Agriculture has fought the plague with the modern enginery of science, quite in contrast with -the methods of the ancient Philistines in Ekron of that land, who suffered from a disease which they must have thought was carried by the mice—a divination of what science has discov-ered-as to the carriers of disease. Five golden mice, “according to the number of the lords of -the Philistines,’’ and five golden tumors, images of the “discomfiture” which the deadly disease caused, were fashioned, put in a coffer In a : eart with the ark, and sent as a “guilt offering." The present occupants of the land have fought tho mice themselves. Four tons of poison grain and gassing machines with 20,000 smoke cartridges have been widely distributed to villages and colonists, gratis, and Ihe labour required lias been performed voluntarily by the Aral) and Jewish farmers alike. That 1 tie two can unite in combaling a common enemy is a hopeful indication.