FRUITS. CHAP. 



296. MICE. Very troublesome creatures. They 

 commit their depredations by night, and must be well 

 looked after. Brick traps are the best things ; for, as to 

 poisoning them, you may poison, at the same time, your 

 cat or your dog. Great vigilance, however, is required 

 to keep down mice ; but it ought to be resolutely done. 



297. RATS. If the garden be near to a house or out- 

 buildings, and especially near to a farm-yard, where dogs 

 and ferrets are not pretty constantly in motion, the rats 

 will be large sharers in the finest of the fruit that the 

 garden produces. On the walls, in the melon-bed, even 

 in the strawberry-beds, they will take away the prime of 

 the dessert. They do but taste, indeed, of each, but 

 then they are guests that one does not like to eat with. 

 Here there is absolutely no remedy other than those of 

 dogs and ferrets. I have seen a wall of grapes pretty 

 nearly cleared by rats, some farm buildings being at the 

 back side of the wall : these nasty things must, there- 

 fore, be destroyed by one means or another. 



298. MOLES. These cannot get into a garden with 

 a wall round it. If they come through or under the 

 hedge, and make their workings visible, they ought to 

 be caught without delay j for, if suffered to get to a 

 head, they do a great deal of mischief, besides the 

 ugliness which they produce. 



299. ANTS. A very pretty subject for poets, but a 

 most dismal one for gardeners j for it is one of the most 

 mischievous of all things, and the most difficult of all to 

 guard against or to destroy. It is mischievous in many 





