216 THE RAT. 
When Fortune smiles, thy friends are many ; 
But, if she frowns, thou hast not any. 
Whilst the rats had all their own way here, they 
annoyed me beyond measure; and many a time 
have I wished the ship at Jericho, which first 
brought their ancestors to these shores. They 
had formed a run behind the plinth in my favourite 
sitting-room, and their clatter was unceasing. 
Having caught one of them in a box trap, I dipped 
its hinder parts into warm tar, and then turned it 
loose behind the hollow plinth. The others, seeing 
it in this condition, and smelling the tar all along 
the run through which it had gone, thought it 
most prudent to take themselves off; and thus, for 
some months after this experiment, I could sit and 
read in peace, free from the hated noise of rats. 
On removing the plinth at a subsequent period, we 
found that they had actually gnawed away the 
corner of a peculiarly hard-burnt brick, which had 
obstructed their thoroughfare. 
The grey rats are said to destroy each other, 
in places where they become too numerous for 
their food; but, bad as they are, I will not add 
this to the catalogue of their misdemeanours. 
They can never be in such want of aliment as to 
do this; because instinct would teach them that 
where there is ingress to a place, there is also 
egress from it; and thus, when they began to be 
pinched for food, they would take off in a body, 
or disperse amongst the fields, and live upon the 
tender bark of trees, and upon birds, beetles, and 
