(M204) Sometimes in dealing with vermin the farmer aims at hitting a happy mean between excessive rigour on the one hand and weak indulgence on the other; kind but firm, he tempers severity with mercy. An ancient Greek treatise on farming advises the husbandman who would rid his lands of mice to act thus: “Take a sheet of paper and write on it as follows: ‘I adjure you, ye mice here present, that ye neither injure me nor suffer another mouse to do so. I give you yonder field’ (here you specify the field); ‘but if ever I catch you here again, by the Mother of the Gods I will rend you in seven pieces.’ Write this, and stick the paper on an unhewn stone in the field before sunrise, taking care to keep the written side up.”(811) In the Ardennes they say that to get rid of rats you should repeat the following words: “_Erat verbum, apud Deum vestrum._ Male rats and female rats, I conjure you, by the great God, to go out of my house, out of all my habitations, and to betake yourselves to such and such a place, there to end your days. _Decretis, reversis et desembarassis virgo potens, clemens, justitiae._” Then write the same words on pieces of paper, fold them up, and place one of them under the door by which the rats are to go forth, and the other on the road which they are to take. This exorcism should be performed at sunrise.(812) Some years ago an American farmer was reported to have written a civil letter to the rats, telling them that his crops were short, that he could not afford to keep them through the winter, that he had been very kind to them, and that for their own good he thought they had better leave him and go to some of his neighbours who had more grain. This document he pinned to a post in his barn for the rats to read.(813) The mouse is one of the most dreaded enemies of the rice-crop in Celebes. Many therefore are the prayers and incantations which prudent farmers resort to for the purpose of keeping the vermin from their fields. Thus, for example, a man will run round his field, saying, “Pruner is your name. Creep not through my rice. Be blind and deaf. Creep not through my rice. If you must creep through rice, go and creep through other rice.” The following formula is equally effective: “Pruner is your real name. Mouse is your by-name. Down in the evening land is the stone on which you ought to sit; in the west, in Java, is your abode.” Or again: “O Longtail, Longtail, eat not my rice. It is the rice of a prince. It is the field of one who is revered.”(814) The Aino of Japan believe that God first created rats and mice at Erum kotan, which means “rat place.” Indeed, there are a great many rats and mice there even now, and the people of the village worship mice and offer them libations and sacred sticks whittled at the top into shavings. Grateful for these attentions, the mice spare the gardens and will not nibble at the roots and the fruits. But if the people omit to worship the mice, or if they are