THE RATS. 15 



most doors is faulty from a rat's point of view. I hiss and 

 clap my hands, and there is a moment's pause : I know the 

 brute is looking at me over the point of its insolent nose. 

 Then again it falls to, in the name of the Prophet, rasp, rasp, 

 rasp. A well-aimed slipper will stop proceedings for five 

 minutes or more, but I have only two slippers. This night 

 must be endured. Next night a trap is set, and, instead of 

 the criminal for whom it was intended, it catches a gentle- 

 looking white-breasted rat, with large soft eyes, and tender 

 pink feet. For there are rats and rats, and a man of average 

 capacity may as well hope to distinguish scientifically be- 

 tween Ghilzais, Kuki Kheyls, Logar Maliks, Spigwals, 

 Ghazis, Jezailchis, Hazaras, Logaris, Wardaks, Mandozais, 

 Lepel Griffin, and Kizilbashes as to master the divisions of 

 the great race of rats. Nature has been prodigal of them. 

 India alone produces at least seventeen kinds, besides fifteen 

 varieties of mice. There is the black rat, the brown rat, the 

 field-rat, the tree-rat, the bandicoot, and so on, to the lovely 

 fawn-coloured Jerboa rat, with its satin-white breast and 

 tufted tail, which wrought such ruin to the crops two years 

 ago. Two of these, Mus rattus, the black rat, and Mus 

 decumanus (from decumanus, a tax collector), the brown rat, 

 have attached themselves to man, and how to detach them 



