184 



CIVIC BIOLOGY 



and no one can tell where some migrating rat will carry it 

 next. Thus while other considerations of damage and general 

 public health make this work expedient, danger from plague 

 renders it imperative. People who do not know have no right 

 to opinions in such vital matters, and the time must come 

 when the ignorant and negligent shall not continue to vitiate 

 the best civic efforts of our towns and cities. 1 



Cannot the biology class in the high school or local acad- 

 emy, assisted by the boys of the upper grades, supply the 

 intelligence and generalship, and bring about the cooperation 



and organization of the civic 

 effort to render the work of 

 extermination effective 

 even to the last pair in the 

 town, or the first pair that 

 migrates to it ? Might not 

 this work alone go far 

 toward repaying to the com- 

 munity the cost of public 

 education ? 



Mice should be dealt with as thoroughly as rats in all these 

 campaigns, and they possess so little cunning that they can 

 easily be exterminated from any premises. Aside from nuisance 

 and damage caused by mice the theory has been advanced that 

 germs of pneumonia become more virulent on passing through 

 the mouse, and thus cause severe and often fatal infections. 



FK;. 89. The only rat this trap caught 

 A poor design .wholly dependent on bait 



1 The thing to do, brothers, is to get together ; cooperate with the health 

 officers ; lend them your moral support as freely as you have your material 

 aid ; and, above all, do your part in suppressing the scoffer, the man who 

 laughs in his ignorance, and who in that ignorance wants to trifle with a 

 situation like this. 



Remember, in these matters each one of us is in a measure his brother's 

 keeper, and let us show this man that if he is not willing to do his part, we 

 are not only willing to do ours, but we are going to see that he does his, 

 whether he wants to or not. .San Francisco Report, 1909, p. 254 



