400 Practical Game Preserving. 



they have constructed at such time as they may deem rest or 

 sleep needful the day not being with them synonymous with 

 quiet and sleep, as with those inhabiting buildings. 



To enumerate the various substances which may serve as 

 food for rats is not necessary. We limit ourselves to pointing 

 out their chief victims of a furred or feathered kind. First of 

 these may be mentioned poultry, which at all times and at 

 every stage suffer more or less from their voracity. Whether 

 it be fowls' or ducks' eggs, chickens or ducklings, is 

 immaterial. The piteous tales that have been told, the 

 equally discouraging ones which we hear every day, and the 

 doubtless no less annoying ones to be recounted hereafter, of 

 valuable sittings and promising chicks devoured and mauled 

 by rats, are provoking enough to try a saintly patience ; and 

 yet how few do more than grumble at their ill-luck, and never 

 attempt to prevent a recurrence of the disaster or take steps to 

 curtail the ravages ! Not only poultry, but pigeons and pets 

 of various sorts, are for ever falling victims to the vermin ; 

 while many a gamekeeper, who has prided himself on the 

 strength of his young pheasants, has had his visions of a 

 grand October day's sport spoiled by the rats in a single 

 night. 



By the pond and riverside they are no less mischievous, 

 for, in addition to waging a war upon the inoffensive 

 water voles, into whose homes they have intruded, they 

 kill many a young fish and water bird, besides honey- 

 combing the banks with their tortuous and extended 

 ramifications. In the hedges, too, they are depredatory, 

 killing multifarious birds, destroying all kinds of eggs, game 

 and otherwise, besides any young partridges, pheasants, 



