IDEAL RATTERS 99 



All plans for the destruction of rats are welcomed 

 by the keeper, because rats are the most numerous of 

 all egg-thieves. He heartily joins the foxes, stoats, 

 and weasels in their war on rats, though he is for 

 ever at war with his co-operators. He believes that 

 there are now more rats than ever, and has figures 

 at his finger-tips to prove the growth of the rat- 

 plague. If, he argues, there were only one rat to 

 every acre in England and Wales, and if each rat 

 did damage only to the extent of one farthing a day, 

 the loss in a year would be 15,000,000. And he 

 quotes a report which says that a single poultry- 

 fancier in Dorsetshire lost 80 in a year through rats ; 

 that the owner of a flour-mill lost 150 in a year, 

 through the gnawing of sacks alone ; that men 

 have attributed their bankruptcy chiefly to rats ; and 

 that the damage done by rats in this country is 

 greater than the damage done by the cobra and 

 tiger in India. 



The gamekeeper holds that there ought to be com- 

 plete, organised co-operation against rats over wide 

 areas, and heavily blames the farmers for not giving 

 proper assistance to keepers in their rat-war. By 

 delaying over-long the threshing of their corn-stacks 

 farmers certainly give rats a grand chance to in- 

 crease and multiply ; and when ricks are left un- 

 threshed until April the rats leave them without let 

 or hindrance, to spread over the countryside as the 

 weather grows warmer, and food is to be found every- 

 where. The keeper argues that ricks should be 



