552 BRITISH HUSBANDRY. [Ch. XLIV. 



occasionally used, will be found very serviceable; but he should be well fed 

 to induce him to return, or otherwise he will escape and become destructive to 

 the poultry. A cat or two should also be always reared in the barn. It is, 

 however, a mistake to suppose that cats live entirely on vermin ; and, if 

 not better maintained, they will have resort to the hen-house. They are 

 objected to as occasioning filth among the corn ; but if a hole be allowed 

 them to permit their escape, and ashes be placed near the outlet, they will 

 not be found offensive. 



For keeping stacka clear of rats and mice, it has been recommended to 



Take one pound of nitre and one pound of alum ; dissolve them together in 

 two parts of spring-water ; get a firlot — or ahout a bushel — of bran, and make a 

 mash thereof, putting in two pints of the above liquid, and mixing all together. 

 When you build your stacks, every second course take a handful or two of the 

 mash and throw upon them till they come to the easing. 



This is said to be so effectual that they will never come near any stack pre- 

 pared in that manner* ; but we should ourselves place more faith in having 

 the stacks built upon stone or iron staddles. • 



There are several different species oi ihe field mouse, and they swarm in 

 many parts of both arable and pasture land : in the forest of Dean they 

 lately destroyed large plantations, and were not eradicated until holes, 

 baited with some attractive food, were bored in the ground to about twenty 

 inches in depth, and wider at the bottom than at top, which preventing 

 them from getting out, at length cleared the ground. The seeds of hemlock, 

 spread in the corn-drills, will poison them ; but it also has the same effect 

 on any birds by which it is eaten. We have also heard that if the tops of 

 last year's shoots of furze be chopped up small, and sown with the corn, it 

 will prevent their depredations, which sometimes amount to a frightful 

 excessf. 



AVe have already mentioned, in our account of tlie pining in sheep, the 

 remark made by the Ettrick Shepherd, of the cause of that distemper being 

 attributed to the change of pasture occasioned by the destruction oi moles : 

 he, indeed, calls it " the most unnatural of all persecutions that ever was 

 raised in a country against that innocent and blessed pioneer, who enriches 

 our pastures annually with the first top-dressing, dug with great pains and 

 labour from the fattest of the soil beneath." Many other persons are of 

 the same opinion ; and it is said that the pasture of many upland farms 

 on the Buccleugh estate was seriously injured by a bargain made between 

 the late Duke and some Westmoreland men, about forty years ago, for 

 the extirpation of the moles during the continuance of a term of fourteen 

 vears ; and numberless instances in point have lately been brought forward 

 in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture J . 



There can be no doubt " that the fresh earth brought to the surface by 

 this animal, and spread, whether regularly by the farmer, or casually by 

 the sheep, or even allowed to remain in the state in which it is thrown uj), 

 must tend to produce a greater variety, and we believe a better species of 

 herbage ;" and we can easily credit the accounts given of the injury expe- 



* Farmer's Mag., vol. viii., p. 452. 



-f- In France, we learn that their ravages have, in some places, been so destructive as 

 to occasion the ruin of the farmeis. At Angerville, whole farms have been given up to 

 the proprietors in consequence of their coniinued deva^tation, and the only method 

 known of checking them is to defer the sowing any grain initil spring; which precaulion 

 occasions them to forsake the fields, as it dcpiives them of the means of winter sub- 

 sistence. 



I See vol. i., p. G40 ; and vol. ii., p, 710. 



