174 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub, Doc. 



other hand, the female will defend her young gallantly. James 

 Rodwell, in an interesting little volume on the rat, containing 

 many facts and some exaggerations, tells of a battle between 

 two rats that he witnessed. Numbers of their companions 

 gathered from all directions. All waited until one was con- 

 quered and dying, then fell upon both combatants like a pack 

 of hungry wolves and tore them to pieces.^ It is a common 

 occurrence for a rat caught and injured in a trap, but not 

 killed outright, to be set upon and eaten by its companions. I 

 have known of many such cases. 



The rat is a courageous animal and when cornered usually 

 will face great odds in defense of its life, and fight to the last 

 breath. Not all individuals, however, exhibit the same daunt- 

 less courage. There is more difference in rats than appears as 

 they run off. 



Dr. Richard H. Creel of the Public Health and Marine 

 Hospital Service of the United States has made some investi- 

 gations into the habits of rats in their relation to antiplague 

 measures. His investigations furnish useful information to 

 those who wish to rid their premises of rats. Five full-grown 

 brown rats were placed within a stockade made of galvanized 

 iron, sunk three feet into the ground. The rats being confined 

 forty-eight hours failed to burrow under the stockade. No 

 burrow extended downward more than two and one-half feet. 

 Black rats so confined made no attempt to burrow. The 

 brown rat burrows with the greatest ease, even in the hardest 

 packed ground, and has perforated walls of sundried brick held 

 together by sand-and-lime mortar, in some cases actually 

 piercing the body of the brick. The English Plague Com- 

 mission credits the brown rat with ability to gnaw through 

 brick or concrete, but it is incredible that it can penetrate 

 properly prepared concrete after it once becomes well hardened. 



In one of Dr. Creel's experiments a brown rat, in an attempt 

 to scale a stockade, jumped upward and outward a distance 

 of seventeen inches. Black rats jumped upward two feet in 

 their efforts to scale the stockade, and in one instance one of 

 them, confined within a perfectly smooth galvanized-iron can 

 two feet in depth, spiraled its way to the top by a series of 



1 Rodwell, James, The Rat; its History and Destructive Character, 1858, p. 22. 



