212 THE RAT. 



that it did accompany the House of Hanover in its 

 emigration from Germany to England. Be this as 

 it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has now 

 punished us severely for more than a century and a 

 quarter. Its rapacity knows no bounds, while its 

 increase is prodigious beyond all belief. But the 

 most singular part of its history is, that it has nearly 

 worried every individual of the original rat of Great 

 Britain. So scarce have these last-mentioned ani- 

 mals become, that in all my life I have never seen 

 but one single solitary specimen; it was sent, some 

 few years ago, to Nostell Priory, in a cage, from 

 Bristol; and I received an invitation from Mr. 

 Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit there, to go 

 and see it. Whilst I was looking at the little native 

 prisoner in its cage, I could not help exclaiming, 

 " Poor injured Briton ! hard, indeed, has been 

 the fate of thy family ! in another generation at 

 farthest, it will probably sink down to the dust for 

 ever ! 



Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress 

 of the stranger rat through England's wide domain, 

 as the old people now alive can tell nothing of 

 its coming amongst them. No part of the country 

 is free from its baneful presence : the fold and the 

 field, the street and the stable, the ground and the 

 garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity 

 and to its forbidding habits. After dining on 

 carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage 

 to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where, 

 like Celaeno of old, " vestigia foeda relinquit." We 

 may now consider it saddled upon us for ever 



