THE COMMON RAT IN CANADA..
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Si,—Allusion was made in your issue of October 1st to the- absence of the common rat Oho Norvegieus) from Manitoba. by the reviewer of Mr. Thompson Seton's delightful book,. "The Life History of Northern Animals." During the last two years, however, this objectionable rodent has made its appearance from the south in Southern Manitoba. Draw a line from Morris, which is about forty-five miles directly south of Winnipeg, west to Pilot Mound and Clearwater—a. matter of about ninety miles—and take all the country directly south of that line some sixteen or twenty miles to the Inter- national Boundary, and you have an area in which the common rat is steadily increasing. As honorary secretary of our local Board of Trade, I have been supplying the rat virus provided by the Provincial Government to our farmers, who have killed numbers by traps and other means already. I fear, however,. that the attempt to stop the invasion is quite inadequate, as our neighbours do not seem to realise what a pest is at our dooms. Doubtless Mr. Thompson &ton will make this cor-rectiOn in the second edition of his valuable Work, and also another in relation to earth-Worms. The common earth-worms—called fislilvierins by native Canadians, to whom, by the way, "a worms' usually denotes "a caterpillar "-by recent importa- tion Of soil and ova from Ontario, are quite -common in • my own garden And in a few other neighbouring- spots. Earth- worms are nOt indigenous to Manitoba, and ten years ago there 'were none probably. • • Frozen, . torpid, shrivelled, and brick-red in colour, they lie 'a foot or more deep in our black -loam through-the winter from October to May.—I am,
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