346 THE COMMON HAMSTER. 



wounds, gives the hamster the victory over the rat. A combat 

 between an old hamster and an old rat, lasts very long, but 

 ends with the death of the rat, the former being the most 

 courageous animal. It never falls in with another of its own 

 species, without trying to make it its prey, the weaker, if not 

 killed, getting more or less severely wounded." * 



The hamster consumes a great quantity of valuable green 

 fodder, as well as corn from the time it begins to ripen, during 

 spring, summer, and autumn, and an old one sometimes lays 

 up a winter store of one hundred weight of horse-beans, or 

 sixty-five pounds of corn, &c., which is lost to the farmer. 

 The parishes which are much infested with this depredator have 

 therefore, from an early period, paid premiums out of the 

 public money for dead hamsters. It appears from the official 

 records kept at the Mansion-House of Gotha that, from the 

 year 1817 (when a general crusade was undertaken against 

 them) to the year 1837 inclusive, the total number of hamsters 

 received there amounted to 286,839, and the total sum paid 

 in rewards for them was five thousand three hundred and 

 ninety-six dollars, two shillings, and fourpence halfpenny. To 

 give a better idea of their abundance, it should be observed that 

 the whole of the fields belonging to the town of Gotha comprise 

 an area of less than seven thousand acres. The stores which 

 the hamsters collect in their burrows are sought for by poor 

 people, who possess neither farm nor land, and who avail 

 themselves of the positive law to sacrifice the animal and 

 possess themselves of the stolen property. 



About the beginning or middle of October, the hamster shuts 

 itself up in its burrow by filling the whole length of the passages 

 with little rounded pellets of earth, which, though they be 

 rammed together very firmly and effectually exclude the cold, 

 yet admit of a partial ventilation. When the winter has fairly 

 set in, it becomes torpid. Soon after the middle of March, it 

 awakes, abandons its winter-burrow, digs new ones, rambles 

 about, and collects its tithes of the corn, &c., as before. 



* Abridged from the Magazine of Natural History (New Series, 1839), 

 vol. iii. p. 474483. 



