2 History and Habits 



dynasty to these shores. My father, who was of the first 

 order of field naturalists, was always positive on this point; 

 and he maintained firmly that it did accompany the House of 

 Hanover in its emigration from Germany to England. Be 

 this as it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has now 

 punished us severely for more than a century and a quarter. 

 Its rapacity knows no bounds, while its increase is prodigious 

 beyond all belief. But the most singular part of its history 

 is, that it has nearly worried every individual of the original 

 rat of Great Britain. So scarce have these last-mentioned 

 animals become, that in all my life I have never seen but one 

 single solitary specimen : it was sent, some few years ago, to 

 Nostell Priory, in a cage, from Bristol ; and I received an in- 

 vitation from Mr, Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit 

 there, to go and see it. Whilst I was looking at the little 

 native prisoner in its cage, I could not help exclaiming, — 

 " Poor injured Briton ! hard, indeed, has been the fate of 

 thy family ! in another generation, at farthest, it will probably 

 sink down to the dust for ever I" 



Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress of the 

 stranger rat through England's wide domain, as the old people 

 now alive can tell "nothing of its coming amongst them. No 

 part of the country is free from its baneful presence : the 

 fold and the field, the street and the stable, the ground and 

 the garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity and 

 to its forbidding habits. After dining on carrion in the 

 filthiest sink, it will often manage to sup on the choicest 

 dainties of the larder, where, like Celaeno of old, " vestigia 

 fceda relinquit." We may now consider it saddled upon us 

 for ever. Hercules himself, could he return to earth, would 

 have his hands full, were he to attempt to drive this harpy 

 back again to Stymphalus. It were loss of time to dwell on 

 its fecundity. Let any body trace its movements in the cellar, 

 the dairy, the outhouse, and the barn, and he will be able to 

 form some notion of the number of hungry mouths which we 

 have to fill. Nine or ten young ones at a time, twice or 

 thrice during the year, are an enormous increase, and must 

 naturally recall to our minds one of the many plagues which 

 formerly desolated the fertile land of Egypt. In the summer 

 months it will take off to the fields, and rear its young amongst 

 the weeds which grow in the hedgerows ; plundering, for 

 their support, the birds' nests with a ferocity scarcely con- 

 ceivable in so small an animal. 



Man has invented various instruments for its destruction ; 

 and what with these, and with poison, added to the occasional 

 assistance which he receives from his auxiliaries, the cat, the 



