324 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
for the truth of this beyond what once happened to myself. I was then 
inhabiting a house which swarmed with these creatures, and one night I 
awoke with a sharp pain in my right arm. Jumping up, I disturbed a 
rat, who sprang off the bed, and was chased and killed by me. I found 
he had given me a nip just below the elbow. I once had a most 
amusing rat-hunt in the house I now occupy. I had then just taken it 
over on the part of the Government, in 1868. ‘The whole building is 
floored with polished marble, which, being new, was like looking-glass. 
I found an enormous rat, which I took for a bandicoot, in one of the 
bath-rooms, and, shutting him in for a while, I closed the doors of a very 
large room adjoining, which was quite empty, and then turned my friend 
in with a small black-and-tan terrier. ‘The scrimmage that ensued was 
most laughable, as both rat and dog kept slipping and sliding all over 
the place. At last the former was pinned in a corner, where he made a 
most determined stand, and left several marks before he died. They 
seldom now come so high as the third story, but we had two or three 
last year which dug a hole through a brick wall into my study, and they 
were surreptitiously disposed of unknown to my eldest little girl, whose 
passionate love for every living creature made her take even the rats 
under her protection, and one of them would come out every morning 
in the verandah to be fed by her with crumbs and grain. This one 
was spared for a while, but I was not sorry to find one day that it had 
fallen into a tub of water in a bath-room and was drowned. 
The brown rat breeds several times in the year, and has from ten to 
fourteen at a time, and it is to be hoped that there is considerable 
mortality amongst the infants. I have never kept rats as pets, but have 
noticed amongst mice a tendency on the part of the mother to devour 
her offspring. I have no doubt that this also is the case with the 
brown rat, and aids in keeping down its numbers. It is stated that 
they will attack, kill, and eat each other. The Rev. J. G. Wood 
remarks in his Natural History: ‘‘ From some strange cause the male 
rats far outnumber the females, the proportion being about eight of the 
former to three or four of the latter. This disproportion of the sexes 
may possibly be caused by the cannibalistic habits of the rat, the flesh 
of the female being more tender than that of the opposite sex. 
Whatever may be the cause, it is clear that the wider increase of these 
creatures is greatly checked by the comparative paucity of females.” 
During the late siege of Paris by the Germans, amongst the various 
articles of food which necessity brought into use, rats held a high place 
as a delicacy. Itis a difficult matter to stop the burrowing of rats; the 
best plan is to fill the holes with Portland cement mixed with bits of 
bottle glass broken in small pieces. It is said that quicklime will 
temporarily prevent rats from entering a hole, as the lime burns their 
feet. A friend of mine lately told me of some wonderful Japanese 
