VERMIN AND TRAPPING 77 



kill one rat, half a dozen come to its funeral ; but 

 I expect they would come, funeral or no funeral. 

 At any rate, the more rat funerals the better for 

 game. I found that if I got my rats down very 

 early in the spring, I was sure to have another 

 stock by the time the pheasants and partridges 

 were nesting, which, of course, is the time when 

 rats do most damage, and when, for obvious reasons, 

 you cannot do much to destroy them without doing 

 nearly as much harm to game interests as would 

 the rats themselves. My plan was to wait till the 

 end of March. Where there are many rats one 

 way and another we destroyed about five thousand 

 a year there is only one way to make anything 

 like a clean sweep of them, and that is by poison- 

 ing or otherwise dosing them. Trapping alone is 

 useless, for while one is catching a score hundreds 

 escape. I would make the most careful search for 

 burrows or other signs of rats over every inch, so 

 to speak, of my ground : this would take two of us 

 ten days. Wherever we found the smallest sign 

 of the work of rats we left ample medicine to go 

 round, and for any tourists that might call in. Also, 

 when a burrow showed no sign of present occupa- 

 tion, we would leave a meal ready for prospective 

 tenants. To deal with rats successfully the treat- 

 ment must be generous and thorough. It is 

 useless to half poison them, or rather to poison 

 half of them. Let the margin be always on the 



