4 History and Habits 



In case it were not convenient or practicable to adopt, 

 similar precautions to those already enumerated, I would 

 suggest what follows : — Take a quantity of oatmeal that 

 would fill a common-sized wash-hand basin ; add to this two 

 pounds of coarse brown sugar, and one dessert spoonful of 

 arsenic. Mix these ingredients very well together, and then 

 put the composition into an earthen jar. From time to time 

 place a table-spoonful of this in the runs which the rats fre- 

 quent, taking care that it is out of the reach of innocuous 

 animals. They will partake of it freely ; and it will soon 

 put an end to all their depredations. 



Rats are fond of frequenting places where there are good 

 doings ; while their natural sagacity teaches them to retire in 

 time from a falling house. This knack at taking care of self 

 seems common both to man and brute. Hence the poet : — 



" Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amicos ; 

 Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris." 



When Fortune smiles, thy friends are many ; 

 But, if she frowns, thou hast not any. 



Whilst the rats had all their own way here, they annoyed 

 me beyond measure ; and many a time have I wished the 

 ship at Jericho, which first brought their ancestors to these 

 shores. They had formed a run behind the plinth in my 

 favourite sitting-room, and their clatter was unceasing. 

 Having caught one of them in a box trap, I dipped its hinder 

 parts into warm tar, and then turned it loose behind the hol- 

 low plinth. The others, seeing it in this condition, and 

 smelling the tar all along the run through which it had gone, 

 thought it most prudent to take themselves off; and thus, for 

 some months after this experiment, I could sit and read in 

 peace, free from the hated noise of rats. On removing the 

 plinth at a subsequent period, we found that they had actually 

 gnawed away the corner of a peculiarly hard-burnt brick, 

 which had obstructed their thoroughfare. 



The grey rats are said to destroy each other, in places 

 where they become too numerous for their food ; but, bad as 

 they are, I will not add this to the catalogue of their mis- 

 demeanours. They can never be in such want of aliment as 

 to do this ; because instinct would teach them that where 

 there is ingress to a place, there is also egress from it ; and 

 thus, when they began to be pinched for food, they would 

 take off in a body, or disperse amongst the fields, and live upon 

 the tender bark of trees, and upon birds, beetles, and other 

 things which the adjacent ground would afford. 



That they move from place to place, in large bodies, cannot 



