CLASS I. MAMMALIA: ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 45,3 



mystification, and to convince myself I take a pin and force it into the trumpet. The animal 



cried out, winced, and a drop of blood came from the prick. The experiment was conclusive it 



was really a trumpet forming a part of the rat. 



"'I wonder. I ask this man if he would sell his rat. He answers in the affirmative. I ask 

 his price. Fifty francs. I pay it without any bargaining, and I bring the animal home. I in- 

 vite my friends and servants to see it; the cry of admiration was universal — I was enchanted. 



"'Some one says to me, "You ought to procure a female," — this was a male. 1 had thought 

 of that, but having seen but one rat at the house of the person who sold it to me, I concluded 

 that he had no more. I determined, therefore, to go directly to see, and I ask him if it were 

 possible to get a female. "Nothing easier," he answered me; "I have written to Africa, and 

 they have sent me many trumpet-rats, of which I have two females." With these w ords, he 

 brings out a cage full of rats like that which he had sold me. He chooses me a female, for which 

 I pay him fifty francs. I carry it off more enchanted than ever. Some months afterward the 

 female has young; I look at them, they had not trumpets! I say to myself, ""Without doubt 

 they will sprout hereafter like the elephant's tusks." I wait one month, two months, six months ; 

 every day I look at the nose of my rats, but the trumpet never appeared. 



"'In a house where I go frequently I make the acquaintance of an officer who had served a 

 long time in Africa. "Tell me," I says to him one day — "you have been in Africa — do vou 

 know the trumpet-rats?" "Perfectly," he answers me. "Ah ! then you can inform me." I then 

 tell him my story. Then this gentleman began to laugh as though his sides would split. I say 

 to myself, " Certainly then I have been duped." When he was calm I beg him to explain the 

 motive of his hilarity. Then he tells me what follows: the trumpet-rat, he tells me, is not a su- 

 pernatural thing, it is an invention due to the leisure moments of the Zouaves. This is how they 

 make them: you take two rats; you tie their paws firmly oil a board, the nose of one close to 

 the end of the tail of the other; with a pen-knife or a lancet you make an incision into the nose 

 of the rat which is hindermost, and you graft the tail of the first into the nose ; you tie firmly 

 the muzzle to the tail, and you leave the two rats in this position for forty-eight hours. At the 

 end of the time the union has taken place, and the two parts are grown together; then you cut 

 off the tail of the rat which is in front to the required length, and let him go, but still keep the 

 other tied to the board, but with his head loose, and you give him something to eat. At the end 

 of a month or more the wound is perfectly healed, and the eyes of the most curious scrutators 

 would not see a trace of the grafting. This is what these Zouaves do; the rats have no trumpet, 

 you have been deceived — les rats rCont pas de trompe ; vous avez ete trompe.'' 



"On the part of the defendant, it was urged that he had certainly made up the rats as has been 

 stated, but he affirms that he had not sold them to the plaintiff as rats ' born? with a trumpet. 



"The President— 'Is this true, M. Triguel ?' 



"if. Triguel — 'You understand, sir, after the experiment which I made with the prick of the 

 pin, which bled and made the animal cry, I ought to believe that the trumpet was natural.' 



"The President — 'Then the defendant told you that it was a particular kind of rat?' 



"The Plaintiff — 'Yes, without doubt.' 



"The Defendant — 'In fact, it is a particular kind of rat.' 



"Verdict for the Zouave, the trumpet-rat maker." 



We have no reason to doubt that such a case as this actually occurred, but that the rat in 

 question was produced in the manner which the report seems to imply, that is, by tying one rat 

 down and making another rat's tail grow on to his nose, we very much doubt. There is a kind 

 of rat or mouse in Africa which nature has endowed with a trumpet or proboscis of its own, called 

 the Rat a trompe by the French, an account of which we have given at page 142. "W e suspect 

 that if the whole truth were known, it would appear that one of this species, and not an artificial 

 rat, was the subject of the trial in question. 



The number of rats collected in the sewers of the larger cities of Europe — which are indeed of 

 such extent as to be like underground cities — is absolutely appalling. Here, for the most parr 

 secure in the possession of their hideous abodes, they feed and fatten on every species of offal, 

 carrion, and filth. Every person who has read the "Mysteries of Paris" must recollect the scene 



