RATS EMPLOYED IN PARIS. 245 



trust to their judgment, chooses a tusk which the rats have 

 gnawed when he wants a specially good bit of ivory. 



Mr. P. L. Simmonds mentions that rats are, or were, 

 turned to account in another way in Paris, where there is a 

 large pound, covering some ten acres of ground and sur- 

 rounded by a stone wall, to which all dead carcases are 

 brought. The bones of the animals are valuable , and so, of 

 course, are their hides ; but they must be freed from the 

 flesh, and how to get rid of this in a sufficiently expeditious, 

 economical, and inoffensive way, was a difficulty, until some 

 one suggested that rats might be employed. They were 

 accordingly introduced by thousands, and did the work 

 required of them to perfection, for a dead horse put in at 

 night would be found turned into a neat and even polished 

 skeleton by the morning. 



Among field-scavengers must be reckoned the hedge- 

 hog, which feeds on animal and vegetable refuse, devours 

 dead game which the sportsman has lost, and probably puts 

 out of their misery such wounded creatures as have escaped 

 the dogs and have crept into some hole to die. 



But of air the mammalia, the most genuine carrion- 

 feeders are the canidce, or dog-tribe, and the hyaenas. 

 Though undoubtedly of great use, they are not perfect 

 scavengers, inasmuch as they prefer their food tainted, and 

 hence their own odour, like that of the vultures, is disgust- 

 ing. 



The pariah dogs are a feature of Eastern cities too well 

 known to need much remark. In Ceylon they are not 

 natives, but European mongrels, a most miserable race, 

 having no owners, living on the refuse of streets and sewers, 



