THE RAINS 95 



question, which somehow had never previously occurred 

 to me. The holes or burrows of these garden rats 

 extend for great distances ; some that I opened were, 

 windings included, fully seventy or eighty feet long. 

 Now, rats do not, like moles, throw up mounds of earth 

 at intervals as they continue their excavations ; all the 

 earth that they bring out must therefore be brought 

 out by the entrance. There ought consequently to be 

 a very considerable heap of the earth at the entrance 

 of all these long burrows, but, as a matter of fact, except 

 v/here the entrance is on the side of a bank, there 

 is seldom, if ever, any accumulation of earth at all ; and 

 even when the entrance happens to be in the side of a 

 bank, the quantity of earth thrown out is but small. 

 What, then, becomes of the remainder ? 



My explanation is that these rats do not, in the 

 ordinary sense of the word, really excavate. They 

 simply loosen the earth before them by digging ; and 

 through this loosened earth they manage to force their 

 bodies, leaving behind them a narrow tunnel. In the 

 course of time this tunnel becomes enlarged by the 

 constant passage of the rat, and at the same time its 

 inner surface becomes firm and hardened. 



That a rat can form a burrow in this way, I know 

 from personal observation. In digging out a rat-hole, 

 it sometimes happened that the rat was within it, but 

 the exit not yet completed. The rat then, becoming 

 aware of our approach, dug a passage to the surface 

 and ran off. This new passage when we came to it, 

 though narrow, was a tunnel quite open and distinctly 

 marked. 



