20 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



morning train in town he will hear these rats scamper- 

 ing about over the metals -and cheerfully squeaking. 

 At Victoria and some other London termini a staff 

 of station cats maintains itself mainly by catching the 

 rats which live under the platforms and feed on the 

 fragments left in the cars by bond-fide travellers. But 

 these very irrepressible rodents seem to flourish in 

 considerable numbers in spite of them. Not long 

 since, when we were returning to town from a week- 

 end shoot accompanied by a good deal of ground 

 game and a retrieving setter, the dog was much 

 admired by a Cockney porter, who " supposed it had 

 caught all them hares and rabbits." We explained 

 that this would have been scarcely correct, but that 

 the dog had been a great assistance in killing and 

 collecting the game according to more orthodox 

 methods. " Well," said our friend, " I only wish I'd 

 got one like him to help me kill the rats in that tunnel. 

 I can tell you, sir, there's such a lot of them, and 

 such big ones, that I am downright afraid to go there 

 at night ! " On the Great Western line in the Vale 

 of the White Horse, and probably in many other 

 places, foxes, carrion-crows, and rooks habitually come 

 to the line for food. The foxes regularly hunt down 

 the embankment, just under the telegraph wires, 

 looking for the bodies of birds which have been killed 

 against the wires the previous day or during the night. 

 It is not hard work for a fox to hunt along three or 

 four miles, and he is very unlucky if in that distance 

 he does not discover two or three dead birds, larks, 

 turtle-doves, partridges, water-hens, and fieldfares being 





