196 NOTES ON A GREAT VISITATION OF RATS, 
on the plains in scores, resorting to the deep cracks or fissures 
for hiding places. These snakes could follow the rats into their 
nests, and there was no escape from such an enemy; owls were 
always plentiful, and very active agents in destroying the vermin. 
Almost simultaneously with this visitation of rats, an ex- 
traordinary flight of grasshoppers passed northwards in a 
compact body about a mile in width and occupying a whole 
day in passing. These insects altered the look of the country 
over which they passed, and so great was their number that at 
night the branches of the trees on which they rested were 
broken down by their weight. Their daily stage was three to 
four miles; and they left nothing green in their line of march. 
There was evidence that the same country had been subject 
to a similar visitation years before—in the fact that hollow trees, 
in which owls had lived for years, were filled with the bones and 
skulls of millions of rats; and great heaps of such remains lay 
around the base of some of these large old hollow trees, when 
the settlers first occupied the country five years before the 
occurrence now related.* 
lt is also interesting to notice that other countries have 
suffered in a similar manner. In the Gazeteer of the ‘‘ Bombay 
Presidency,” there is a description of rat plagues in Ahmed- 
nugger, a district north-west of the Hyderabad State - of 
an area of 6,666 square miles, and a population of 751,228. 
“This district is subject to visitations of famine and other 
calamities, of which the most striking and singular is the plague 
of rats. Generally the rainfall in June suffices, by filling the 
holes and fissures, in destroying them in large numbers and 
preventing a plague. But when the rain is late or does not 
come, then the number of rats is always excessive. In the last 
* Instances are not uncommon of parts of Australia “ being subject to 
an infliction of over-production in animal life;’? amongst others it is 
reported that Cooper’s Creek, and the far western country, were visited 
many years ago by multitudes of mice—a visitation similar, in point of 
numbers, to that of the rats in the Gulf Country. 
