242 NATURAL HISTORY. 



This animal is carnivorous, and we may u.se llicr 

 expression omnivorous. Hard substances, however, 

 it prefers to soft ones. It devours wool, stuff's, and 

 .furniture of all sorts; eats through wood, makes hid- 

 ing-places in walls, from whence it sallies forth in 

 quest of prey, and frequently returns with as much as 

 it is able to drag along with it, forming, especially 

 when it has young ones to provide for, a magazine of 

 the whole. The females bring forth several times in 

 the year, though mostly in the summer season ; and 

 they usually produce five or six at a birth. 



In defiance of the cats, and notwithstanding the 

 poison, the traps, and every other method that is used 

 in destroying these creatures, they multiply so fast as 

 frequently to do considerable damage. In old houses, 

 in the country especially, where great quantities of 

 corn are kept, and where the neighbouring barns and 

 hay-stacks favour their retreat, as well as their multi- 

 plication, they would often become dangerously nu- 

 merous, were they not to devour each other. This we 

 have often found to be the case when they have been 

 straitened for provisions ; and the method they take 

 to lessen their numbers, is for the stronger to dispatch 

 the weaker. After this, they lay open their skulls, 

 and first eat up the brains, and afterwards the rest of 

 the body. Next day hostilities are renewed in the 

 same manner ; nor do they suspend their havoc till 

 the majority are destroyed. Hence it is, that after 

 any place has for a long time been infested with rats, 

 they often seem to disappear of a sudden, and some- 

 limes for a considerable wlu'le. 



The female always prepares a bed for her young, 

 and provides them immediately with food. On their 

 first quitting the hole, sht watches over, defends, aad 



