CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 



447 



"Rats, when hard pressed for food, are not particular as to what they eat. In extremities they 

 will attack and devour human flesh. An instance, corroborating this fact, came to my personal 

 knowledge and inspection about Christmas-time, 1851. The body of an unfortunate pauper, whose 

 frame was emaciated to the last degree by famine and want, was brought to one of the theaters 

 of anatomy in London, for dissection. When the corpse was placed on the table, it was found 

 that the whole of the lips and parts of the ears were wanting; in the place of the eyeballs were 

 empty sockets; the parts also covering the palmar surface of the fingers were gone, only the bones 

 and nails being left. Besides this, marks of teeth were visible on various other parts of the body. 

 How came all this mutilation? What had caused this fearful disfigurement? Upon inquiry, it 

 was ascertained that this poor victim of starvation had been taken in from the streets, friendless 

 and unknown, into a workhouse — there he had died, and had been carried to the dead-house pre- 

 vious to removal to a dissecting-room. The rats — for, living in a workhouse, we may suppose 

 that they, too, did not get too much to eat — had found out the corpse, and in the space of one 

 night had committed all this havoc, devouring the most tender parts of the body ; at least, I sup- 

 pose they had found the parts that were missing were the most dainty morsels, for the marks of 

 their sharp teeth showed that they had had a taste of nearly every other part of the body. After 

 this event, means were taken to prevent the ingress of the rats into the dead-house, and a similar 

 case has not since occurred. 



HAWK AND RAT. 



"Rats will sometimes attack living men, though in this case fear, and not hunger, is their mo- 

 tive. Mr. Mayhew writes as follows :—' About that time a troop of rats flew at the feet of another 

 of my informants— one of the men who work in the London sewers— and would have no doubl 

 maimed him seriously, "but my boots," said he, "stopped the devils." "The sewers general ly 

 swarm with rats," said another man: "I runs away from 'em, I don't like Jem. They in general 

 gets away from us; but in case we comes to a stunt end where there is a wall and no place 

 'em to get awav, and we goes to touch 'em, they fly at us. They're some of em as big as good 

 sized kittens. One of our men caught hold of one the other day by the tail, and he found I trj - 

 ing to release itself, and the tail slipping through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to stop 

 it, and the rat caught hold of his finger, and the man's got an arm now as big as his tlngii. 



