STOWAWAYS ON SHIPS 431 



"work'' the county. From that time till 1914 ratcatchers 

 varying in number from two to seven were constantly em- 

 ployed, with the result that in the six years 116,857 Rats 

 were killed. This is nothing, however, to the massacres 

 which have taken place elsewhere, as in 1901 on a 2000 acre 

 farm near Chichester, where, in a season, systematic destruc- 

 tion by poisons, traps, and ferrets accounted for 31,98 r ; while 

 in addition more than 5000 were killed at the thrashing 

 an astounding total of over 37,00x3 for a year 1 . 



Suppose we allow a single Rat on an average to each 

 acre of cultivated land in Scotland, our stock would be ap- 

 proximately 5,000,000 in number, and suppose we allow that 

 each Rat on an average contents himself with food to the 

 value of one farthing per day (a low estimate, for actual trial 

 has shown that the cost is more than one halfpenny, but 

 some Rats feed on garbage and refuse), then the bill for 

 food alone would amount to ,1,875,000 a year. Add the 

 waste and damage done to houses and furniture, game and 

 poultry, flowers and bulbs, and we find that the harbouring 

 of this unsought alien must cost Scotland roughly ,2,000,000 

 a year. On a similar basis, Boelter calculated that the food 

 of the 40,000,000 rats of the United Kingdom must cost 

 over ,15,000.000 a year. In the United States in the 

 great centres of population of over 100,000 inhabitants, the 

 annual loss has been reckoned by Prof. David E. Lantz at 

 ,4,000,000. In 1904 Rats cost France an estimated amount 

 of close on ,8,000,000 ; Denmark it has been stated, loses 

 ,600,000 a year, and Germany at least ,10.000,000. To 

 such financial losses must be added the even more important 

 influence of the Rat in disseminating disease among men, a 

 subject to be referred to again (p. 507). 



Yet in all these countries which suffer so greatly through 

 its ravages, the Rat is no more than a disreputable alien, 

 a rascally stowaway from overseas. 



But the ravages of Rats are not confined to men's goods, 



1 So serious has the Rat plague become in Britain that the Government 

 has been compelled to take action ; and while the Board of Agriculture and 

 Fisheries successfully carried out in October 1919 one national rat-week for 

 England and Wales and another in December, Parliament has endeavoured 

 to enforce destruction by means of the Rats and Mice (Destruction) Bill, 

 which came into force on ist January, 1920. 



