240 THE RAT. 



similar precautions to those already enumerated, I would suggest 

 what follows : Take a quantity of oatmeal that would fill a common- 

 sized washhand-bason : add to this two pounds of coarse brown 

 sugar, and one dessert spoonful of arsenic. Mix these ingredients 

 very well together, and then put the composition into an earthen jar. 

 From time to time place a table-spoonful of this in the runs which 

 the rats frequent, taking care that it is out of the reach of innocuous 

 animals. They will partake of it freely ; and it will soon put an end 

 to all their depredations. 



Rats are fond of frequenting places where there are good doings ; 

 while their natural sagacity teaches them to retire in time from a fall- 

 ing house. This knack at taking care of self seems common both to 

 man and brute. Hence the poet : 



" Donee eris felix, multos numerabis amicos ; 

 Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eria. 



" When Fortune smiles, thy friends are many j 

 But if she frowns, thou hast not any." 



Whilst the rats had all their own way here, they annoyed me 

 beyond measure ; and many a time have I wished the ship at Jericho, 

 which first brought their ancestors to these shores. They had formed 

 a run behind the plinth in my favourite sitting-room, and their clatter 

 was unceasing. Having caught one of them in a box-trap, I dipped 

 its hinder parts into warm tar, and then turned it loose behind the 

 hollow plinth. The others, seeing it in this condition, and smelling 

 the tar all along the run through which it had gone, thought it most 

 prudent to take themselves off; and thus for some months after this 

 experiment, I could sit and read in peace, free from the hated noise 

 of rats. On removing the plinth at a subsequent period, we found 

 that they had actually gnawed away the corner of a peculiarly hard- 

 burnt brick, which had obstructed their thoroughfare. 



The gray rats are said to destroy each other in places where they 

 become too numerous for their food ; but bad as they are, I will not 

 add this to the catalogue of their misdemeanours. They can never 

 be in such want of aliment as to do this ; because instinct would 

 teach them that where there is ingress to a place, there is also egress 

 from it ; and thus, when they began to be pinched for food, they 



