626 MURIDA—EPIMYS 
property annually. The real numbers of rats are probably not 
realised by ordinary people. In 1901, about 37,000 were killed 
on a farm of 2000 acres near Chichester,’ and over 12,000,000, 
mostly of the &. vattus group, were killed in certain parts of 
India* in the years 1878-79. Dr A. E. Shipley,’ assuming 
the rat population of Great Britain and Ireland to be about 
40,000,000, or one for every human being and slightly less than 
one per acre, estimated the total annual loss occasioned to us 
by rats at the huge sum of 410,000,000, while Sir James 
Crichton- Browne * has even placed the damage at 415,000,000 
per annum. 
Sometimes rats cause destructive fires by stealing and 
accidentally igniting lucifer matches,° or by gnawing through 
gas pipes they give rise to inflammable leaks® or asphyxia of 
the human inhabitants.’ Sometimes they destroy the insulating 
covering of wires used for electric lighting,* which may again 
result in conflagrations. 
Inasmuch as rats are quite palatable animals,’ it might 
be thought that all flesh feeders” could live upon them; 
but their ferocity and vigour in defence is so great 
that most carnivorous creatures, though glad to catch the 
young, pause to reckon the consequences before attacking a full 
grown rat—if she be a doe with young her prowess is increased 
tenfold." Only strong dogs, ferrets, or cats, will face rats, but 
1 Field, 27th Sept. 1902, 545. 
2 Brit. Med. Journ., 16th September 1905, 623. 3 Shipley, of. cit, 66. 
4 Journ. Incorp. Soc. for the Destruct. of Vermin, i., 74, October 1908 ; for other 
countries, see Lantz, of. cz¢., who calculates the annual loss to the citizens of the 
United States of America as $20,000,000 = £ 4,000,000. 
® As on H.M.S. Revenge ; see Hardwicke’s Science Gossip, v., 142, 1869. 
® As in Phillip’s warehouse, Church Street, London ; see Journal cit., x., 73, 1874, 
7 E. Newman, Zoologist, 1875, 4378. 
8 Lantz., op. czt, 
® Owen Jones states that rat-pie tastes like rabbit if made from well-fed animals, 
1” For a horse killing a rat, see S. B. Wells, Fze/d, tst June 1912, 1110. 
" Cocks (2 dt.) says:—“While young rats are useful food for nearly any 
carnivorous mammal or bird, tough old ones are unwholesome for more delicate 
feeders, such as Wild Cats or many birds of prey. On one occasion more than twenty 
years ago, I put a fine old rat alive in, for the supper of a correspondingly fine male 
Wild Cat. Within a very few minutes the rat disappeared. On the sixth day 
afterwards, my man opened the door of the cat’s ‘bed-sitting room,’ and found the 
rat there perfectly well. For five nights the cat and rat had slept side by side, and 
the rat had doubtless maintained itself by scraps from the Wild Cat’s daily meals.” 
