1889-90-] Rats and the Balance of Nature. 329 



no dispute, the cause and cure, altliougli freely discussed, 

 appear in a great measure to be only a matter of surmise and 

 conflicting speculation. I have read with interest the various 

 theories that have been submitted from day to day, and with- 

 oixt any wish to dogmatise, or to lay claim to any superior 

 knowledge further than that which is implied by lengthened 

 personal observation and a close and careful study of the 

 subject, I feel satisfied that few of these theories will stand 

 the test of close criticism, while some of them are transparently 

 absurd. Let us look at a few of the most popular and 

 reasonable explanations which are being given for the origin 

 of the pest, and the best means of getting rid of it. 



Warm weather and the scarcity of water about farm 

 " toons," when the vermin betake themselves to the fields 

 and woods, where they are allowed to breed without molesta- 

 tion, have been assigned as the cause of the nuisance. This 

 may have been the case in some farm " toons," but about 

 many others there is abundance of water, so that the reason 

 here submitted is inadmissible except in some very exceptional 

 cases. Ko doubt rats, like fashionable people in towns, like 

 to rusticate in warm weather, and once having taken up their 

 abode, will scarcely leave it so long as food - supplies are 

 obtainable. The method of snaring and not trapping rabbits 

 has also been submitted as a cause of the rapid increase of 

 rats in the fields. A writer in the ' Scotsman ' asserts that 

 since the passing of the Ground Game Act, snaring rabbits 

 has come more into vogue than trapping. Where snaring 

 has been substituted for trapping, it is certain that many rats 

 will be allowed to live that would have been caught in the 

 rabbit-traps. A large East Lothian agriculturist, the late 

 Mr Dudgeon of Upper Keith, told me shortly before his death 

 that on his farm the previous winter two hundred rats had 

 been caught in the hedgerows round his fields in the rabbit- 

 traps. Had his rabbits been snared instead of trapped, it is- 

 easy to see how the following summer his fields would have 

 been overrun with rats. A few weasels were also taken, 

 which, of course, is inevitable in trapping, as they continually 

 run in and out of holes. One objector blames the destruction 

 of weasels by gamekeepers ; while another, as we have seen, 

 asserts it is because rabbits are not trapped that rats are 

 allowed to increase. Nothing, I affirm, kills down stoats- 



VOL. II. . z 



