ALONE IN A ROOM FULL OF RATS 21 



in a house of a relative of mine in Ohio, and one 

 in my own home on Long Island. It is claimed by 

 some writers that singing mice are afflicted with 

 bronchitis and that what we call singing is only 

 the wheezing of the invalid mouse. Whatever the 

 cause may be the noise they make, as I remember 

 it, has stronger claims to be called music than have 

 many of the so-called songs of our native warblers. 

 From various reports it appears that, 



LIKE GREY SQUIRRELS AND LEMMINGS, RATS 

 SOMETIMES MIGRATE. 



In 1904 reports came from Illinois that certain 

 rural districts had been visited by swarms of rats, 

 one farmer having killed on his own place, three 

 thousand four hundred and thirty-five of them 

 without apparently diminishing their number. Rats' 

 skins are reported to have some value, and when 

 tanned are said to be used for the thumbs of fine kid 

 gloves, while the whiskers of mice are used in 

 manufacturing expensive flies fancied by anglers. 

 But if these rodents were of any great -value 

 we would soon find means of exterminating 

 them. The good they do as scavengers is 

 hardly of enough importance to entitle them 

 to a credit mark, and, on the contrary, the harm 

 they do in spreading the plague and other diseases 

 is in itself sufficient reason for a war of extermina- 

 tion. We may exterminate beautiful birds, the 

 dainty prong-horned antelopes, the magnificent 

 and stately bison, but rats and mice will probably 



