6o Northern Observations of Inland Birds 



towards ridding himself of this pest, he has, nevertheless, 

 precipitated it upon the gamekeeper. Personally I would 

 prefer to see a game preserve overrun by stoats than 

 subjected to a rat invasion, for, besides being active egg 

 thieves, these creatures will tackle anything they can 

 hold, and being less nomadic than stoats they are there 

 for the year, once they have dug themselves in. They will, 

 moreover, when established in this way, completely drive 

 out all the game which exists. 



The wonderful adaptability of the house rat, and that 

 he will at once change his mode of Hving in order to keep 

 abreast of the times, has many times been shown. In 

 certain parts of America where the rat war has been most 

 fiercely waged by the very effective means of enclosing all 

 rat foods, the rodents have left the cities in thousands and 

 established themselves in the swamps, where to-day 

 they are living in giant colonies much after the manner of 

 musk rats. The same thing is happening in England and 

 Scotland, and the more fiercely the rat war is waged the 

 greater the number of rats we shall find permanently 

 residing in the country. The brown rat will not starve 

 so long as there are fields and coverts, where he is very- 

 well able to look after his own interests, and he bids fair 

 to cause the gamekeeping fraternity quite a considerable 

 amount of trouble in the near future. 



To show how adaptable and enterprising rats are — 

 some time ago I was motoring just before sundown in 

 East Lothian when we passed at the roadside a huge 

 dump of city refuse, evidently conveyed from the environs 

 of Edinburgh by motor lorry. The district was thinly 

 peopled, no buildings of any kind near, but as we passed 

 I observed a large rat to run across the heap. I then 

 stopped the car, and, one's eyes becoming adjusted, the 

 startling fact was revealed that the heap was literally 

 creeping with rodents. Further examination showed that 



