208 ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



who for a couple of coppers will convoke the caymans 

 as a farmer would summon his pigs, — nay, often without 

 any audible signal, by merely going to the water's edge 

 and standing with uplifted hands till the alligators throng 

 around him in crowds. He declines to divulge his modus 

 operandi, but his employer is positive that he never feeds 

 or touches his pets. About his private theory the pul- 

 quero, too, is somewhat reticent ; but when my former 

 colleague, Dr. Landgrebe, of Tampico, once asked him 

 a home question, — " What could possibly induce the 

 caymans to gather around a person who never feeds 

 them?"— "No se" ("I don't know"), he replied: " se 

 cogan los castores con cl r astro" ("beavers are baited with 

 a scent"). 



In Europe the rat-catching business is monopolized 

 by the gypsies, who may have imported their methods 

 from their native country, for it is now an established fact 

 that their race are the descendants of a tribe that left 

 Hindostan during the reign of the first Mogul dynasty. 

 In Austria, where the zigeuner are as frequent as tramps 

 in New England, a rat-catcher will take a contract to 

 expurgate a farm for ten kreutzers (about eight cents) a 

 house, and twenty kreutzers the whole premises ; and he 

 certainly earns his fee. He uses both traps and poison ; 

 but the peculiarity of his bait is its instantaneous effect. 

 With poisoned cream-cheese a man might kill a good 

 many things in the course of a year; but the zigeuner 

 will lock himself up in a stable, and after an hour or so 



