136 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



well known to the ancients^ but exactly how they 

 carried it has only recently been made known to us, 

 chiefly through the work of Simons, who explained 

 the part played by fleas. At first his rat-flea 

 theory was dismissed by the Indian Commission, but 

 recent experiments undertaken by the Advisory 

 Committee for Plague Investigation in India have 

 proved the flea theory beyond any possible doubt. 

 Thus the danger we have to fight against is not so 

 much the rat, as the flea upon it. Indeed fleas, flies 

 and all insects, which suck our blood and crawl over 

 our food should be taken much more seriously ; they 

 should be regarded in their true light as carriers of 

 disease and death, and every effort made to abolish 

 them from our houses, shops and markets. 



I cannot resist quoting one or two of the illustra- 

 tions Dr. Sambon gives of the knowledge possessed 

 by the ancients of the danger of the rat. He re- 

 minds his readers of the golden images of plague 

 buboes and rats which the plague-afilicted Philistines 

 presented as a trespass offering in returning the ark, 

 and describes " the colonial coin of Lucius Yerus 

 struck at Pergamum at the time of a plague epidemic 

 whereon ^sculapius, the god of medicine, is repre- 

 sented with a rat at his feet. He takes the place 

 and attributes of a local deity — Apollo Smintheus, 

 the destroyer of rats, ' whose arrows spread the 

 plague.' '^ 



The same author also considers that the consecra- 

 tion of the cat, hawk and snake by the Egyptians 

 was due to the fact that these animals were known 

 to be slayers of the plague-cai-rying rat. Such a 



