334 THE COMMON BROWN RAT. 



having heard them, opened the gratings and hoisted them up, 

 whence they were conducted back to prison. The men who 

 enter the sewers to clean and repair them carry lights, and are 

 in too great force to be attacked. When several rats are con-* 

 fined together in a box they fight desperately, and the vanquished 

 are devoured by the victors. 



" The Regent's Park Zoological Gardens are greatly infested 

 by rats ; but as they are too cunning to risk the danger of 

 being caught during the day-time, or alarmed, perhaps, at the 

 concourse of visitors, they are often seen towards evening cross- 

 ing the canal in a body from the opposite shore, in order to 

 land in the gardens, and enjoy their night's depredations, return- 

 ing in the morning in the same manner to their daily retreat."* 



These animals being so exceedingly obnoxious, it may be well 

 to mention, that if chloride of lime be sprinkled about their 

 haunts in dwellings, they will be effectually banished while any 

 smell of the liquid remains. But if it be desired to kill them, 

 instead of driving them to one's neighbours, an excellent and 

 cheap composition may be employed, and without endangering 

 the lives of dogs, poultry, pigs, or children. Get some plaster 

 of Paris and thoroughly mix it, in its unslaked state, with 

 about double its^weight of oatmeal. The rats, not detecting the 

 adulteration, eat the mixture eagerly 5 but the moisture in their 

 stomachs will cause the plaster to " set," and form an indigest- 

 ible hard mass, producing death by constipation - } and when the 

 animal is opened a fine cast of its stomach may be extracted. 

 The Glasgow Herald, in April 1840, stated that Mr. Baird, of 

 Greenbank, Pollokshaws, sowed a small plot of garlic in the 

 spring of 1838, and "when the grain was deposited in his stack- 

 yard in harvest, a little of the garlic was strewed on the ground, 

 and it was found, when the stacks were put in, in the following 

 spring, that they were entirely free from the inroads of the rat. 

 In 1839 he repeated this experiment, and last year he took in 

 the last of his stacks without having sustained the slightest 

 damage." 



* History of British Quadrupeds (1837), p. 319. 



