A GENTLEMAN IN VELVET 223 



setting up of a water-rat is bound to be some- 

 thing of a success. Therefore it is a good beast 

 for a beginner to begin with. 



This reminiscence is set down here merely to 

 enable me to express the wish that the enemies 

 of the water-rat were limited to the taxidermists of 

 tender years, for there is every reason to think 

 that a very innocent little animal is suffering for 

 sins not its own. On the brookside where I slew 

 my victim twenty years ago, I could count any 

 summer evening on seeing a dozen of them, looking 

 like miniature beavers, on a hundred yards of bank . 

 On a recent evening I searched a mile of it and 

 saw not one. They have been extirpated. And 

 why? Chiefly because in popular nomenclature 

 they share the use of a name which for the best 

 of reasons is in much disrepute ; and as at the 

 present time an anti-rat crusade is in full swing, 

 they are likely to suffer even more than in the past. 



The first thing to learn about the water-rat is, 

 that it is not a rat at all. It has the dimensions 

 and some of the outward semblance of a rat, but 

 it is merely a vole, and there is no vice in it. 

 It has not even a nasty tail, an appendage which, 

 in its scaly forbiddingness, counts for much in 

 the rat's unpopularity. 



The bank of a stream half choked with vegeta- 

 tion and a June evening are the time and place 

 to study the water-vole. You move cautiously 

 along with an eye on the off-side, and, if the 

 rat -exterminator has not been at work, should soon 

 catch a glimpse of the martyr to mistaken identity. 

 Probably he will be attending to his toilet, an 



