304 OUT OF DOORS. 



money value of practical zoology. The armed men rise 

 from the furrows, fierce, hungry, and destructive, dis- 

 puting its possession with the new-comer ; but we fling 

 among them the stone placed in our hand by science, 

 they turn their arms against each other, and those 

 which survive the contest become our willing slaves. 



Still taking the rat as our text, see how a practical 

 knowledge of its habits enables us to expel it from any 

 place where it may have injudiciously taken up its abode. 

 I say ' injudiciously,' because rats are useful enough in 

 their right place, and by devouring all kinds of garbage 

 save us from many pestilential diseases. Granting, 

 however, that they have established themselves in some 

 spot where their company is undesirable, how are we to 

 expel them? Simply enough. Make their quarters 

 unpleasant, and let them find nothing to eat. This 

 was the method observed at Walton Hall, where the 

 rats had triumphantly revelled for many a year, while 

 the legitimate owner of the house was battling with 

 snakes and fever in the distant forests of Guiana. 

 Finding their haunts liable to continual raids, and their 

 supplies of food cut off, they left the inhospitable house 

 in disgust, and when fairly out of it were debarred from 

 re-entrance by the judicious application of stone and 

 iron. Fifteen years were occupied in learning the 

 habits of the rat with sufficient accuracy to attain this 

 successful result, but, considering the benefit conferred 

 by this knowledge, the time was by no means wasted. 



As a general fact, the result of the half century's 



