Ground Vermin Habits of Rats. 397 



which frequent houses in rural districts live a more varied 

 existence, and some of them betake themselves in spring 

 time to the hedgerows, while others find agreeable abode 

 along the banks of rivers, and beside ditches and ponds, 

 mostly in the burrows of their relatives, the water-voles, 

 which they oust with but little ceremony. 



If there be a particular breeding season, it is from the 

 beginning of spring to the commencement of winter, about 

 three-fourths of the year. The season is, however, indefinite, 

 for all through the winter young ones are met with in odd 

 places, generally in a conveniently warm situation. If we 

 may judge from the tame white ones, the brown rat must 

 be an animal of wonderful fecundity, for an excellent 

 authority, who has bred many hundreds of the pet rat, asserts 

 that they breed six times in the year. What an enormous 

 number of rats, then, must go to the average produce of one 

 doe for two years ! 



Rats which form their nests in and about hedgerows, on 

 the banks at the water side, and about fields, construct a 

 shelter of a different kind from those whose haunts are in 

 buildings. The former first select a secluded situation where 

 warmth, dryness, and other necessary attributes of a rat's nest 

 are present, and burrow, scoop out, or adapt a suitable hole, 

 at the far end of which, where the passage is widened out, the 

 female forms a nest, employing various substances, such as 

 soft leaves, dry grass, ferns, moss, &c., together with any 

 wool dropped from sheep, which are neatly manipulated into 

 a nest of circular shape, and if not wholly covered, so deep 

 in its construction as to nearly close over the dam and her 

 numerous progeny. 



