No. 4.] RATS AND RAT RIDDANCE. 181 



flour and meal in bags are eaten by them, and much more 

 ruined or depreciated in quahty by the filth which they dis- 

 tribute. While trapping rats in a dwelling house I found stored 

 in the barn twenty twenty-five-pound bags once filled with 

 flour, nearly all of which had been eaten or ruined by rats. 



Small fruits disappear mysteriously, and birds that are 

 known to eat them receive the blame; in many cases rats are 

 the culprits. Rats, like squirrels, can climb bush, tree or vine. 

 Unlike squirrels, rats work mainly in the night and escape 

 notice, but they have been seen taking fruit from trees in 

 daylight. 



Dr. L. O. Howard, Chief of the Bureau of Entomology, 

 United States Department of Agriculture, records the fact that 

 in a single afternoon he shot 28 rats from the branches of a 

 cherry tree in Washington, District of Columbia. Rats have 

 been seen to steal cherries in England, and both the black rat 

 and the roof rat are shot in large numbers from the branches 

 of fruit trees and other trees in the south. 



Capt. R. R. Raymond, United States Army, asserts that at 

 West Point, New York, when visiting some cherry trees he 

 frequently met rats in the trees on the same errand as himself.^ 



Fruits and vegetables, when stored in buildings and cellars, 

 are attacked by rats. Quantities of grapes, oranges, bananas, 

 figs, dates and cocoanuts, and pods of cocoa from which choc- 

 olate is manufactured, are ruined by them. Grapes grown 

 under glass especially are subject to attack. Massachusetts 

 farmers report destruction of apples and potatoes in their 

 cellars in quantities, aggregating hundreds of barrels. Rats are 

 very destructive to tomatoes at times and to melons and 

 squashes, which they appear to gnaw into mainly to obtain 

 the seed, thus ruining far more than they actually destroy. 

 Vegetables and fruits in transit on railroads and steamboats 

 and in freight houses are eaten. Rats destroy cucumbers, 

 sweet potatoes and grapefruit in this way. Rats eat seeds, 

 bulbs, stems and leaves of flowering plants. Florists' green- 

 houses are invaded by them. Tulips seem to be their favorite 

 bulbs, and there are many tales of the loss of quantities of 

 tulips; hundreds of bulbs are sometimes destroyed by rats 



' Lantz, David E., U. S. Dept. Agr., Biol. Surv. Bull. 33, 1909, p. 24. 



