150 MORE MINOR HORRORS 



special relation to either the age or the sex of 

 either species. The microbe is conveyed from 

 rat to rat and from rat to man by a flea. 



The destruction of the rat is now being 

 urged on all hands, and in the near future 

 we shall probably see a considerable diminution 

 in their numbers in the more civilised countries 

 of the world. This will mean a considerable 

 upset in the balance of power of the almost 

 hidden fauna which surrounds us on all hands. 

 It may even, as the Medical Officer of Health 

 for Bristol has pointed out, lead to an increase 

 of immigration of ship-rats — ^those most likely 

 to be infected by plague — to take up the 

 places vacated on land by the slain. By one 

 of those commercial agencies — I do not pro- 

 pose to go into the merits of any one of them — 

 which the enterprise of our merchants is 

 now pressing on the public, a large landed 

 proprietor a few months ago completely freed 

 his buildings of rats and mice. A few weeks 

 later his house and out-buildings were over- 

 run by swarms of what to him — for in the 

 time of the rats and mice he had never seen one 

 — was a new and formidable insect. He sought 

 the aid of the Royal Agricultural Society, who 

 referred the matter to their scientific adviser, 

 who pronounced the insects to be cockroaches ! 



Mr. H. Warner Allen, the representative 

 of the British Press with the French Army, 

 writes as follows in the Morning Post : — 



