THE WATER RAT 493 
stalks they are often severed beneath the surface, brought up 
or allowed to float, and then recovered. Water Rats have been 
observed to eat, amongst other things, grass, clover, portions of 
sword-flags, purple loosestrife, winter cress, creeping ranunculus, 
marsh marigold, pondweed, leaves of duckweed, stems of the 
white water-lily, horse-tails, fallen leaves of willow, ivy and 
black poplar, acorns, and more rarely beet, mangels, swedes, 
and potatoes.’ In winter it may attack the roots and bark of 
young trees and shrubs in orchards’ or plantations,*® and has 
long been known to be occasionally destructive to osiers and 
bullrushes. Messrs H. J. Charbonnier and C. Lloyd Morgan 
accuse it of climbing nut-bushes to carry off the nuts, and 
Mr C. E. Wright has seen one sitting on a bird’s nest 
eating haws like a Bank Mouse. It has been convicted of 
devouring small fish, earthworms,’ insects,° and even young 
ducks. The latter must be regarded as quite exceptional 
provender,® unless already dead,’ the fish quite occasional, 
but the invertebrates more frequent. Mr F. J. Aflalo has 
seen it fishing up larve from the bed of the Hampshire 
Stour, Mr Gordon Dalgliesh* has taken it in traps baited 
with meat, Mr Forrest gives an instance of its eating a dead 
trout lying on the bank of a stream, and Mr A. Patterson® 
1 Five black Water Rats were found in a potato pit at Airds, Newabbey ; 
R. Service, Azn. Scott. Nat. Hist., 1904, 67. 
2 Duns, of. cét.; T. B., Hzeld, 412 (piece of barked apple tree sent to editor). 
3 J. Hardy, on the authority of correspondents, stated (Proc. Berw. Nat. Club, 
viii., 189, 1877) that the roots of young sycamores, willows, and oaks planted near 
water frequented by Water Rats had been gnawed across, and the Water Rats were 
thought to have done the damage ; but it does not appear that specimens were actually 
caught in the act. At Cocks’s former home at Great Marlow, two or three magnolias 
of fairly large growth were killed at different times, by the bark being gnawed away 
just above the ground by Water Rats. 
4 It is sometimes recorded to have been taken with fishing flies, perhaps by an 
accidentally wide cast. 
5 FE. R. Alston (in Bell); C. M. Butlin, Aze/d, 15th October 1910, 758. 
6 Collett gives an instance of a Norwegian Water Rat emptying the nest of a 
wheatear. 
7 W. Evans saw a half-eaten young redshank lying at the entrance of a burrow; 
probably the bird was not killed by the Water Rats. 
8 Zoologist, 1902, 66; for a similar instance in the case of a roach, see P. M. 
Watkins, Fze/d, 8th December 1907, 1024. 
9 Trans. Norf. and Norw. Nat. Soc., vi., 293, 6th April 1897, 1899; Zoologist, 
1898, 306 (‘Mammalia of Great Yarmouth”); Journ. cit, 1902, 111; Eastern 
Norfolk, 1905, 317; Norfolk Estuary, 1907, 335. 
VOL. II. PEAY Vd 
