THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 623 
eels ;’ in cultivated lands, all sorts of leaves, stems, flowers, 
roots,” or grain; in towns and houses, milk, butter, cheese, 
bread, flour, jam, and refuse of all sorts; on roads, the 
undigested portions in the droppings of animals; in game 
preserves, dovecots, or farmyards, young pheasants, pigeons, 
ducks, or poultry ; in old walls, snails, rejecting the shells ;* in 
meadows, grass-seed ;* in orchards, fruit ;° in warrens, young 
rabbits.°. Everywhere and at all times young, small, or weakly 
vertebrates‘ are hunted with a ferocity suggestive of a lust for 
killing, since the victims are often left uneaten. Wherever 
domestic animals feed or are fed, a host of these marauders 
attends to assist in the meal or clear away the leavings. One 
result of this ubiquity is that it is of very little use for one 
person to trap and destroy them. Those killed amid the flesh- 
pots of a farmyard simply leave vacancies for their ravenous 
brethren of the barer fields. 
It is quite marvellous how they discover where animals are 
fed. They even find their way into mines.* Barrett- Hamilton 
saw them chasing birds coming to feed on crumbs in times of 
snow, and they will take the water to quarrel with water-fowl 
at feeding time. 
1 Lamperns—E. Brown, Zoologist, 1843, 212. Eels—J. Hardy, Zoo/ogist, 1846, 
1364; R. Lydekker, Royal Natural History ; Shipley, of. czt., 65. 
2 Swedes—R. M. Barrington (Zoo/ogist, 1878, 178) and many others have pointed 
out that in eating a swede, which they prefer to a turnip, rats gnaw right round the 
root, ending (if they do not pass on to another one) in the centre ; they also bite off 
and reject bits of the rind, which lie conspicuously on the ground. Hares are also 
said to reject the rind (H. Miller, Zoo/ogis¢, 1878, 100), but they and rabbits differ 
from rats in gnawing right through the root from one side to the other. Another and 
safer method of distinction would be afforded by the size of the marks made by the 
incisors of the three rodents. 
3 Snails—Merrifield, Sketch of the Natural History of Brighton, 157; Harting, 
Zoologist, 1887, 190, Rambles in Search of Shells, 73, and Vermin of the Farm, 4 
4 Hence a handful of “hay-seed” is a very useful thing for sprinkling over rat- 
traps. 
5 Climbing the trees for apples and cherries (Fie/d, vol. 78, 660) ; morella cherries, 
J. B. Ellman, Zoologist, 1848, 2223. 
6 Hence rabbit-trappers have frequently to kill off the rats in rabbit burrows 
before they can secure the conies. Puffin Island, off Anglesey (Robert Stephenson), 
and the Skerries, near Holyhead, are said to have had their stocks of rabbits 
destroyed by rats which escaped from shipwrecks (Pattisson in Bell, ed. 2, 313). 
7 Smaller rats—R. M. Barrington, Fze/d, 1875, 4662. For conflicts between rats 
and hedgehogs—the former not always being the aggressors, see p. 62 above. 
8 “Coal-mines ”—G. Roberts, Wakefield, Zoo/ogist, 1867, 553. 
