MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 165 



No. VI.— EXPECTED PLAGUE OF FIELD RATS IN 1920. 



With reference to Mr. L. J. Sedgwick's note at p. 661 of Vol. 

 XXVI of our Journal on the above subject, and Mr. J. Davidson's 

 note on the same at p. 1041 of the same volume, through the kindness 

 of The Hon'ble Mr. P. J. Mead, c. i.e., i.e. s., I have been favoured with an 

 inspection of these records from the Bombay Secretariat — Part II, P. W. D., 

 Famine Relief Works — Destruction of rats in the Eastern Deccan, October 

 1879 to May 1880 — and a perusal of these records furnish some interesting 

 details which I give below. 



History of the Plague of Field Rats after the Famine of 1877-78. 



The Rat Plague appears to have been confined to the area known during 

 the last famine (1877-78) as famine districts, viz. — 



Nasik. Satara. Kaladgi (Bijapur). 



Khandesh. Sholapur. Belgaum. 



Poena. Ahmednagar. Dharwar. 



The remaining nine districts of the Presidency, namely, 



Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolaba, 



Broach, Kaira, Ratnagiri, 



Panch Mahal, Thana, Kanara, 



having been altogether free from this pest. 



Dates of commencement of Rat-plague. 



The appearance of these vermin seems to have first attracted notice in 

 November 1878 in the Sholapur Collectorate and in the ending of December 

 of that year they appeared also in Kaladgi Collectorate. The Collector 

 of Poena dated theic first appearance as late as February 1879, and they 

 occurred at the same time in Ahmednagar District. I cannot find any trace 

 of when they were first noticed in Dharwar, the district which sufi'ered most 

 from this visitation. 



The Collector of Kaladgi (Mr. Middleton) states that "the heavy 

 rainfall during the later monsoon had fostered the growth of weeds in the 

 crops which otherwise promised an abundant harvest but for the appear- 

 ance of rats. For many years there had not been a year in which they 

 could have done so much damage as they did this year (1879). The 

 crop was far above the average and the loss was on that account greater. 

 The origin of the plague is not satisfactorily accounted for. Superstition 

 attributed it to the vengeance of the famine victims whose ghosts returned 

 in the form of rats to claim the food for want of which they had perished. 

 A more credible cause is that the rats, which always abound, found safety 

 and were able to breed in enormous numbers on the fields formerly 

 cultivated but left waste by the deaths of the cultivators during the two 

 previous years. They found shelter while their enemies, the birds of prey, 

 had not increased in equal numbers. Snakes which are useful in^destroy- 

 ing rats had probably decreased owing to the absence in 1876-77 of the 

 grass and vegetation which are necessary to conceal them. ' 



Breeding Season. 



The plague of rats appears to have temporarily increased after the 

 breeding season at the close of the monsoon, 1879. 



The first letter in reference to the decrease of the pest is from the 

 Collector of Sholapur to the Commissioner, Central Division, Poona, dated 

 3rd October 1879 and mentions that " the number of these vermins had 

 d ecidedly decreased. Formerly one Waddar would bring m 70 to 80 in a 



