THE CRIMINAL RAT.
THE Danes, who spare no trouble to protect their im- portant butter industry, have lately undertaken a national campaign against rats. This has been done partly as a precaution against plague breaking out in their sea-ports, and partly because butter-tubs are particu- larly attractive to rats; for there is nothing more disgusting than the thought that these filthy animals may have been in contact with so absorbent and easily tainted an article of food.
In England, on the other band, no concerted effort is made to check the rat plague. The animals are increasing every- where, to the detriment of agriculturists, poultry-owners, game farmers, and not less so of our native wild birds of many kinds. The percentage of linnets', bullfinches', warblers', and other nests of our smaller birds the eggs of which are eaten by rats is very large, as any one may prove who seeks for them, and watches the fate of the nests. They also act as a serious check on the increase of wild fowl, which began after the Protection Acts were passed. They prefer the eggs of wild ducks and marsh birds to any other food, and a case was lately mentioned in which the owner of a wild duck farm found thirteen ducks' eggs in the hole of one doe rat. In the month of October there is a great movement of these animals from the East Coast inland. On a shooting estate lately visited by the writer, where incessant trapping keeps them at bay, an October invasion is always expected ; and as the whole property is kept carefully under observation, the direc- tion from which they cross the frontier is well known. It is very probable that this march of the mischievous is partly due to the closure of the main herring fishery on the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk about that time, and that the increase of the rats is not unconnected with the exceptionally large catches of herrings made during the past few seasons. The shoals of herrings have passed all previous records, and some six hundred Scotch women have been engaged in "cleaning" the fish. Sometimes the refuse is very properly saved for fish manure. But the garbage of countless numbers of herrings is thrown away, and this attracts and keeps fat the rats in the late summer and early autumn. When the source of supply grows less, the creatures move inland. In Norfolk this was aggravated a few years ago by a severe flood in parts of the fen. This drove out tens of thousands of rats from the low land to the higher ground. The plague was such that on one estate the keepers were afraid to go to one wood at night, so numerous and bold were the creatures. It was not until after weeks of wholesale poisoning and trapping that their numbers were reduced. But they had come to stay, and several circumstances aided them in their resolution. Not the least important item in the rats' favour was the almost universal spread of pheasant preserving and pheasant rearing. If a line be drawn per- pendicular to the east coast of Norfolk inland to Cambridge- shire, near Newmarket, and thence, in a slightly different direction, through Hertfordshire, it cuts one continuous succession of great pheasant preserves. On these the _pheasants are supplied, often over-lavishly, with artificial food all the year round. The quantity of meal scattered for the young pheasants, and of Indian corn thrown out to "keep the birds at home," in the autumn and winter, is such that it makes a considerable item in the profits of local corn-dealers. It is given with the greatest regularity every day, and the rats will always have their share, coming out in the most impudent way and feeding among the pheasants. If the keepers are slack in their duty, every pheasant preserve becomes a rat preserve. On the partridge manors it is so impossible to allow the rat to increase, and to exercise its egg-stealing power in spring, that, as a rule, the vermin are kept at bay. Another factor in the dispersion and harbouring of these pests is the modern plan of build- ing the corn-stacks in the field from which the wheat has been reaped, instead of bringing it all home to the rickyard. It saves the loss of time and the expense of carting the loads to the homestead. There is also less risk of the whole harvest being destroyed by fire. But every one of these isolated stacks scattered over the face of the country makes a comfortable winter home for rats, and a point of dispersion from which when the grain is threshed out they move out into the hedgerows and pond banks. They are particularly fond of bean-stacks, partly because the thick light bean-straw is easy to burrow in, partly because they like to eat beans. On "heavy land" farms in wet weather the rat-runs are now traceable like hare-runs on the downs, broad paths crossing the open fields and beateii flat by the animals' feet.
Almost the only places in which they do no harm, and are even useful, are the tunnels of the underground rail- 'lays of London, and near the platforms of the great London termini. Passengers throw quantities of surplus food out of the windows, and the railway rats. come out by night and devour it. The electrification of the District and " Circle " lines has greatly, diminished the rats in those parts of underground London. They are not only very inquisitive, but naturally and habitually touch every object they come near, first with their whiskers, and then with their nose. No other mammal uses its whiskers as feelers so persistently. They are not still for a moment, but always kept in motion like a fly-fisher's rod. With " live " rails down in the tunnels, which emit the peculiar smell accom- panying highly, charged conductors, this inquiring habit of the rats leads them to disaster. They smell that the " live " rail is not quite like an ordinary length of steel, put their whiskers against it, and finally lay their noses on it. This causes death in a moment, the rats falling backwards, and expiring after one or two kicks.
Indifference, and not any particular difficulty in destroying them, accounts for the multiplication of the plague in the open fields, banks, preserves, and corn-stacks. Rath in such places can always be killed by poisoning them in their burrows, and as they usually die underground, no risk is incurred after their death either from the decay of the bodies, or from other and valuable animals eating the poisoned carcases. Meal is put into the holes with a long spoon for two or three nights. Then the supply is omitted for a night, and finally poisoned meal is put in and the holes stopped outside. This is not possible in houses, or even near them ; but it is very effectual in the fields, and one peculiar feature of the recent rat invasions is that they are mainly confined to the rural districts and to the open country. In towns, owing to better sanitation, and the removal of all dusthole rubbish, they have greatly diminished. It is a fact that the surroundings of ordinary London houses are enormously more clean and healthy than those of the ordinary country house, where there are no "destructors," and refuse accumu- lates in some corner or other, where, so long as it is out of sight, it is usually out of mind.
That there is something absolutely repulsive in the rat per as is partly proved by the instinctive horror in which it is held alike by men, women, children, and most other animals. Horses will often refuse to feed, and are unable to sleep if there is a rat in the stable by night. Birds of all kinds hold them in horror, except those which, like the now almost extinct buzzard, make them their principal food. A hen is quite helpless against them, and is often killed on the nest ; and though a partridge would defeat a rat by day, and drive it off, it can do nothing against it at night. Rats are said to have broken up and caused the removal of the gallery from Sedge Fen at Hoveton, near Norwich, to its present secure position in the sedges of the Little Broad, where the water protects them effectually even from the most enterprising rat.
Some time ago a medical correspondent of the Spectator wrote to draw attention to the way in which rats directly cause sickness and death by poisoning shallow wells with their decaying bodies. They are thirsty creatures, and in their eagerness to reach water fall into the wells and are drowned. Several fatal cases of so-called "septic pneumonia" were found to be due to drinking water so poisoned. That they carry plague is well known. But, in addition, they are disseminators of every kind of disease which can be conveyed into drains and from drains ; for of all highways the rat loves a drain the best.
It is one of the curiosities of animal temperament that while the brown rat is so universally detested, the closely related Alexandrian rat—the white or piebald varieties are well known in this country—is almost a favourite. It is a very quiet, docile little animal, almost affectionate in its relations with man, and constantly kept as a pet by children. It is clean and very gentle, never by any chance offering to bite, and is as intent on storing up food as if it had never forgotten the experience of its ancestors in the "lean years" when Joseph ruled under Pharaoh. It is the humblest of all domestic pets, but often quite interesting in its ways, the only draw- back to its company being the close resemblance in appearance to the criminal brown rat.
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