1 76 THE MONKE Y FAMIL Y. 



Others have an unbounded one for example, a travelling tom-cat 

 Some animals may inhabit only certain parts of a country, as a 

 Bengal tiger. Others, again, are positive cosmopolites, as is the 

 case with the Hanoverian rat. Other animals are known to thrive 

 in one locality, and to perish in another, although both localities 

 appear pretty nearly the same to us short-sighted mortals. 



Thus, about eight years ago, I had occasion to dissect an old 

 turkey cock, of the wild American breed. It swarmed with lice to 

 an inconceivable extent. Whilst I was engaged in the dissection, 

 lots of these gallinaceous lice found their way on to my own body. 

 I knew full well that they had got into a wrong box, and that they 

 would not keep company with me for any length of time. So I let 

 them have their own way, and I gave myself little or no trouble 

 about them. In less than four and twenty hours, every louse of 

 them had either died or dropped off proof sufficient that their 

 change of locality had been fatal to them, and that a turkey's louse 

 is not intended by nature to thrive, or to exist, on the person of 

 human beings. 



Now, on the other hand, we hear of animals so constructed, and 

 of such a pliable temperament, that neither change of food nor of 

 climate appear to have any deteriorating effect upon them. I may 

 here introduce the Hanoverian or Norway rat, as a genuine and un- 

 doubted specimen. It can thrive amazingly, either in the pig-stye 

 or in the palace. I have known it to gnaw away the protruding 

 angle of one of our old blue and red burnt bricks (nearly as hard as 

 iron itself), which happened to be in the way of a proposed run ; 

 and I have at times observed it in localities apparently inaccessible 

 to things of flesh and blood. Add to this, it can swim like a fish. 

 We have a phenomenon here just .now, that really ought to be 

 recorded, nothwithstanding my repugnance to this greedy little 

 beast. Almost every part of the country teems with Hanoverian 

 rats, and we read in the newspapers, that a similar plague has 

 appeared in some parts of France. This rat, as everybody well 

 knows, maintains itself on plunder. No prog, no Hanoverian. 

 ''Point d' 'argent, -point de Suisse" as the old French saying has it. 

 Luckily for me these audacious thieves can no longer enter my 

 house nor the out-buildings, so effectually have I barred their 



