No. 4.] RATS AND RAT RIDDANCE. 177 



houses, to say nothing of the toll taken from fruit, vegetables, 

 poultry, eggs and other food. 



I have visited livery stables the proprietors of which believed 

 that they had but few rats, but careful observation showed 

 that considerable sums were lost yearly through unnoticed 

 thefts perpetrated by numerous rodents that nightly entered 

 the open, unprotected or carelessly closed grain bins, and daily 

 fed in the mangers with the horses. These gentlemen relied 

 on wandering cats that had taught the rats to keep out of 

 sight. 



Rats are numerous in cities and villages, particularly in 

 grocery, provision and grain stores, warehouses and grain mills, 

 and many proprietors of these places practically have given 

 up trying to repress them, and have resigned themselves to 

 serious losses. 



Rats multiply most rapidly if well fed, sheltered and little 

 molested. They find favorable conditions on farms where 

 grain is grown. In 1901 a country estate of 2,000 acres near 

 Chichester, England, was so badly infested by rats that 31,981 

 were killed within five years, under the supervision of the 

 owner, and it was estimated that the tenants, while threshing 

 the grain, had killed 5,000 more.^ 



In Jamaica in one year 38,000 rats were killed on one plan- 

 tation.^ 



Farm holdings in England often were, and still are, badly 

 infested. Rodwell says that a boy in Shropshire killed 630 rats 

 in about four months, and it was computed that there were at 

 least 1,260 rats on this farm of 280 acres. On another farm, 

 of 400 acres, when the barn was emptied, after the threshing, 

 over 1,400 rats were killed, and numbers escaped into drains 

 and rabbit holes. On another place, of 180 acres, a boy was 

 employed with six or eight traps, who caught five or six rats 

 each night during the winter months, and at the emptying of 

 one barn 800 more were killed, making in all 1,340 rats. On 

 an estate, of 330 acres, 1,095 rats were said to have been killed 

 during the year. A rat catcher of jNIiddlesex, with two ferrets, 

 killed in one barn about 250 rats in one day, and more than 

 200 were killed there the next day. On another farm he caught 



1 The Field (London), Vol. 100, Sept. 27, 1902, p. 545. 

 » New Eng. Farmer, Vol. 12, 1834, p. 315. 



