BUREAU OF BIOLOGICAL SURVEY. 353 



been received from military and naval officers in charge of camps, 

 arsenals, and storage warehouses for the inspection of these places by 

 experienced representatives of the bureau and for specific directions 

 regarding procedure in destroying the rats or protecting property 

 from their depredations. This was done at the naval base, Norfolk. 

 Va. ; at the arsenal and military camp located at Amatol. X. J. ; and 

 at the Picatinny Arsenal. Dover, X. J., where effective control meas- 

 ures were inaugurated and carried out. In other instances the situa- 

 tion was met by sending bulletins and furnishing other necessary 

 information. State officials and public health officers of cities also 

 appealed to the bureau for practical plans of organizing extended 

 eradication campaigns and for suggestions regarding legislation or 

 ordinances which should be put into effect with a view to complete 

 and permanent rat control. 



Interest on the part of State and municipal 2:)ublic health officials 

 was stimulated by the appearance of bubonic plague at Beaumont 

 and Galveston, Tex., and at Pensacola. Fla.. with the possibility con- 

 fronting them of its further spread. The rat serves as a carrier of 

 fleas responsible for the transmission of the plague to human beings, 

 and because of its extended movements from place to place within 

 a city and from point to point throughout the country it becomes an 

 active agent in disseminating this malignant disease. This situa- 

 tion, together with the fact that the rat is a notorious carrier of 

 filth-borne diseases and a destroyer of property by contamination, 

 also of food, feed, clothing, farm machinery, and harness and other 

 leather goods, has emphasized tlie importance of carefully planned, 

 thoroughly organized, and vigorously conducted campaigns for the 

 destruction of all rats. Attention has been called to the fact that 

 State laws and city ordinances should require all new buildings to 

 be made rat-proof, and should also require the adoption of practi- 

 cable measures for rat-proofing existing buildings, sewers, and water 

 mains. Such action is of the utmost importance in any plan to 

 eliminate the enormous losses of property and to remove the constant 

 menace from disease due to the widespread abundance of house rats 

 and mice. 



Representatives of the bureau were detailed to visit Norfolk and 

 Portsmouth, Va., and Baltimore, Md., to advise and assist the local 

 officials in working out comprehensive plans for the organization of 

 campaigns to destroy rats. Considerable assistance has also been 

 rendere<l in urban and farming communities by local representatives 

 of the bureau in connection with their regular field operations 

 against rodent pests in the organized districts of the AVest. Emjiha- 

 sis has constantly been j^laced upon the absolute necessity for the 

 rat-proof construction of buildings and storage places in both urban 

 and rural communities as a means of obtaining permanent relief 

 from rats, and upon the necessity for preventing the pests from 

 finding harborage and having ready access to food supplies, as an 

 essential preliminary step to the carrying out of effective measures 

 for destro3'ing them. 



MOLES. 



Many reports have been received from the Eastern and ^fiddle 

 States of damage by moles to lawns, garden and truck crops, and 

 flower nurseries. AA'liile not rodents, moles are frequentlj' confused 



