THE DESTRUCTION OF VERMIN AND PESTS 179 

 RATS, MOLES AND SPARROWS 



Rats have been slain by the hundred thousand in Indian 

 and American cities on account of the damage they do and 

 of the bubonic plague which they carry; and in our own 

 land single farms and country villages have on occasion 

 accounted for many thousands of these notorious thieves. 

 As, however, this aspect of its multiplication will be con- 

 sidered in the discussion of the Rat's introduction to Scotland 

 (see p. 431), the subject need not be more than mentioned 

 here. 



The damage caused by Moles, since cultivation by in- 

 creasing their food multiplied their numbers, must be great 

 and their destruction by professional mole-catchers on a 

 corresponding scale. I have no means of estimating the 

 annual slaughter in Scotland, but Mr O. H. Wild tells me 

 that in April 1918 he saw the dead bodies of some 750 

 individuals hung along a hundred yards of fence at Aberlady 

 railway station the result of three weeks' trapping on farms 

 in the neighbourhood by a single mole-catcher. To this 

 collection bodies were still being added at the rate of twenty- 

 five a day. 



The Common Sparrow has been slain in its thousands 

 on account of its devastation in cornfields and gardens. 

 Sparrow Clubs have been formed in many districts, especially 

 in England, for the reduction of the pest, and during the 

 War the Government issued special orders for its destruc- 

 tion. In three years the Tring Sparrow Club accounted for 

 39,058 individuals; the Ixworth Sparrow Club slew 14,669 

 in 1915, and the Slimford Rat and Sparrow Club killed in a 

 few years 84,590 vermin and destroyed 17,201 Sparrow's 

 eggs. 



RABBITS AND HARES 



Just as man has created the sparrow pest by the in- 

 creasing perfection of his tillage, so in Scotland he has also 

 created the hare and rabbit nuisance. Since the Rabbit 

 escaped from the warrens to which it was introduced, and 

 took to living wheresoe'er it pleased, and upon whatsoever 

 of the farmer's crops it could most readily obtain, it has 



