223 



by leaks in lead pipes or wooden tanks gnawed by rats. Bricked 

 areas and even foundations are undermined and ruined by rats. All 

 this is real waste and a constant drain on the resources of the country. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



A few instances of miscellaneous damage by rats may be mentioned 

 to show the great variety of mischief chargeable to the animals. 



A Washington, D. C., merchant reported that at one time rats in 

 his store destroyed 50 dozen brooms worth $2.50 a dozen. In another 

 store, in a single night, they broke $500 worth of fine chinaware on 

 shelves and tables. A dealer in harness reported the loss of $400 

 worth of collars in one season. The manager of a restaurant com- 

 plained of an average loss of $30 a month in table linen ruined by rats 

 and mice. A hotel reported the destruction of $75 worth of linen in 

 a month. 



At Mobile, Ala., in March, 1908, lost jewelry worth $400 was recov- 

 ered from a rat's nest in the home of Senor Viada. 



In London rats at one time killed all but 11 out of an aviary of 

 366 birds. 



At Hamburg, Germany, Carl Hagenbeck once had to kill three 

 young African elephants because rats had gnawed their feet, inflicting 

 incurable wounds. 



Rats often gnaw the hoofs of horses until they bleed. They kill 

 young lambs and pigs, and have been known to gnaw holes in the 

 bodies of very fat swine, causing death. 



Like the muskrat, the brown rat often burrows into embankments 

 and dams, causing serious breaks. 



The rat is one of the greatest enemies with which the sugar planter 

 has to contend, destroying acres of growing cane. 



In rice plantations rats not only break down and destroy the grow- 

 ing crops, but burrow into the dikes and flood the fields at the wrong 

 season. 



On the London docks and on shipboard ivory is often badly dam- 

 aged by rats. They select for attack the greenest tusks, which are 

 the more valuable. 



Mail sacks and other kinds of bagging are greatly injured by rats. 

 The consequent loss and necessary outlay for repairs are a large item 

 in post-office expenditures and in mills and other places where bag- 

 ging is used. 



About the year 1616 rats caused a two years' famine in the 

 Bermudas. In the southern Deccan and Mahratta districts of India 

 rats ate a large part of the scant crops of 1878 and 1879, and were 

 regarded as in a great measure responsible for the severe famine which 

 followed. A writer in Chambers's Journal stated that the Dutch 



a Brit. Med. Journ., p. 623, September 15, 1905. 



