THE RAT. 213 
Hercules himself, could he return to earth, would 
have his hands full, were he to attempt to drive 
this harpy back again to Stymphalus. It were loss 
of time to dwell on its fecundity. Let any body 
trace its movements in the cellar, the dairy, the 
outhouse, and the barn, and he will be able to form 
some notion of the number of hungry mouths 
which we have to fill. Nine or ten young ones at 
a time, twice or thrice during the year, are an 
enormous increase, and must naturally recall to our 
minds one of the many plagues which formerly 
desolated the fertile land of Egypt. In the sum- 
mer months it will take off to the fields, and rear 
its young amongst the weeds which grow in the 
hedgerows; plundering, for their support, the birds’ 
nests with a ferocity scarcely conceivable in so 
small an animal, 
Man has invented various instruments for its 
destruction ; and what with these, and with poison, 
added to the occasional assistance which he re- 
ceives from his auxiliaries, the cat, the dog, the 
- owl, the weasel, the ferret, and the foumart, he is 
enabled, in some degree, to thin its numbers, and 
to check its depredations. 
There are some localities, however, from which 
it may be effectually ousted, provided you go the 
right way to work. My own house, than which 
none in Great Britain can have suffered more from 
the plundering propensities of the Hanoverian rats, 
is now completely free from their unwelcome pre- 
sence. On my return to it in 1813, they absolutely 
seemed to consider it their own property. They 
P’3 
