No. 4.] RATS AND RAT RIDDANCE. 179 



pounds of bread daily. The ship was fumigated, and six 

 hampers were filled every day for some time with dead rats.^ 



Surgeon William C. Hobdy relates that the British steamer 

 "Gadsby" on a voyage of twenty-nine days had 44,000 out of 

 46,000 bags of wheat in her cargo cut by rats, with an estimated 

 damage of ^2,200. He says also that a small vessel (260 tons) 

 was fumigated in San Francisco, after which 310 rats were 

 picked up dead, — • "a barrelful and seven." On another larger 

 vessel, fumigated some years earlier at Bombay, 1,300 rats 

 were destroyed at one time, and the steamship " Minnehaha," 

 fumigated at London, England, in May, 1901, yielded 1,700.^ 



Organized eft'orts to destroy rats have been made in various 

 countries, and the numbers killed give some indication of rat 

 abundance. In 1904 at Folkstone, England, the corporation 

 employees, with the help of dogs, in three days killed 1,645 

 rats.^ 



A rat hunt at New Burlington, Ohio, November 26, 1866, 

 yielded over 8,000 rats. In this hunt sides were chosen, as at 

 a spelling bee, and the beaten party gave a dinner to the 

 winners.^ A sparrow club in Kent, England, secured the 

 destruction of 28,000 sparrows and 16,000 rats in three seasons 

 by expending £6 (§29.20) in prizes.^ An international asso- 

 ciation for the destruction of rats in Denmark succeeded in 

 getting a government appropriation for its work, under which 

 1,141,293 rats were killed during the first year, ending July 1, 

 1908.^ In Copenhagen 103,000 rats were destroyed in eighteen 

 weeks. In seven years 711,797 were killed in Stockholm.^ 



In the work done in American cities to check the bubonic 

 plague great numbers of rats have been killed, although no correct 

 count of them could be obtained, as both traps and poisons 

 were used, but in the first four months about 130,000 were 

 destroyed in San Francisco. In the early months of 1908, up 

 to ]May, 278,000 were captured, and it was estimated that 

 500,000 had been poisoned. In a report of the Indian Famine 



' Rodwell, James, The Rat, 1858, p. 164. 



2 Treas. Dept., Public Health and Marine Hospital Serv. of U. S., The Rat and its Relation 

 to the Public Health, by various authors, 1310, pp. 208, 209. 

 » The Field (London), Vol. 104, July 16, 1904, p. 98. 



* Lantz, David E., U. S. Dept. Agr., Biol. Surv. Bull. .33, 1909, p. 51. 

 s Jour. Bd. of Agri., Gt. Britain, Vol. 9, 1902, p. 342. 



* Jour. Inc. Soc. for Destruction of Vermin, Vol. 1, Oct., 1908, p. 32. 



' Lantz, David E., U. S. Dept. Agr., Biol. Surv. Bull. 33, 1909, p. 53. 



