184 PARTRIDGES 



pound note with equal avidity ; has killed 

 babies in the cradle, 1 and tramps sleeping 

 in a barn. yHe has been known to eat 

 his way straight through a live fat pig, 

 while it is recorded that when the band- 

 stand of the Gaiety Restaurant was re- 

 moved a few years ago, beneath were 

 found the remains of no less than 1728 

 serviettes, dragged there and destroyed 

 by the rats. The zenith of his sublime 

 audacity may be said to have been 

 reached when we read that in many 

 public gardens the mighty hippopotamus, 

 turning over in his sleep, has squashed 

 flat numbers of rats which had come to 

 gnaw at his extremities. 



In the ordinary course of events, and 

 without taking into any account the 

 serious hurt done to game, or the perhaps 

 somewhat abnormal damage to hippo- 

 potami or table-linen, it has been estimated, 

 at a very moderate computation, that rats 

 cost the community in this country some 



1 The last recorded instance was at Lewisham in 

 November 1905, when a six weeks' old child was gnawed 

 to death in the cradle. 



