216 THE RAT. 



When Fortune smiles, thy friends are many ; 

 But, if she frowns, thou hast not any. 



Whilst the rats had all their own way here, they 

 annoyed me beyond measure ; and many a time 

 have I wished the ship at Jericho, which first 

 brought their ancestors to these shores. They 

 had formed a run behind the plinth in my favourite 

 sitting-room, and their clatter was unceasing. 

 Having caught one of them in a box trap, I dipped 

 its hinder parts into warm tar, and then turned it 

 loose behind the hollow plinth. The others, seeing 

 it in this condition, and smelling the tar all along 

 the run through which it had gone, thought it 

 most prudent to take themselves off; and thus, for 

 some months after this experiment, I could sit and 

 read in peace, free from the hated noise of rats. 

 On removing the plinth at a subsequent period, we 

 found that they had actually gnawed away the 

 corner of a peculiarly hard-burnt brick, which had 

 obstructed their thoroughfare. 



The grey rats are said to destroy each other, 

 in places where they become too numerous for 

 their food; but, bad as they are, I will not add 

 this to the catalogue of their misdemeanours. 

 They can never be in such want of aliment as to 

 do this ; because instinct would teach them that 

 where there is ingress to a place, there is also 

 egress from it; and thus, when they began to be 

 pinched for food, they would take off in a body, 

 or disperse amongst the fields, and live upon the 

 tender bark of trees, and upon birds, beetles, and 



