304 CORAL AND ATOLLS 



poison the Indian Ocean, or even that small portion of it that 

 lies within the lagoon. 



Rats may be killed in thousands — this has been done for 

 years and years, and special gangs of the natives have no 

 other employment than rat-catching. Rats may be trapped 

 in astonishing numbers, they may be hunted with dogs, preyed 

 on by cats, shot, poisoned, and routed out, but they will not be 

 exterminated. Trapping merely consists of a wearying repeti- 

 tion of baiting traps overnight and emptying them in the 

 morning, dogs and cats become lazy, and prefer to hunt the 

 land-rail ; and, at the best, it is an altogether exceptional dog 

 that will organise a rat-hunt on his own account, and in ray 

 experience a dog that can at any time catch a rat by walking 

 a few paces soon tires of the occupation. Shooting becomes 

 expensive, and is but a feeble method. Poison leads to 

 disastrous suicide in drinking-water tanks, to untimely deaths 

 amidst provisions, to horrid death scenes in your bathroom, 

 to beastly sounds in your bedroom by night, and to deaths of 

 other and more valued animals, and is not to be recommended. 

 Immense numbers may be killed by turning over the piles of 

 coconut husks, and murdering all that bolt — but next day 

 the pile will have its tenants again. Danysz virus is quite 

 inert by the time that it can reach the atoll, the journey is too 

 long, and the temperatures of the voyage too varied ; — and 

 those rats that were fed on it, and inoculated with it, whilst 

 kept in cages, only exhibited a more than normal fecundity. 



If other forms of virus will succeed any better I do not 

 know ; but the experiment is being made. 



In 1878 the islands received a fresh accession of rats. 



The ship Robert Portner was wrecked in that year, and 

 from this wreck the atoll derived the greatest curse that has 

 ever fallen to its lot. Cyclones have visited the islands from 

 time to time, and have done incalculable damage ; but the 

 steady depredations of the rats cause far more loss than the 

 occasional visits of cyclones ; their numbers are legion, and 

 their work is continuous. 



The Robert Portner rats settled on most of the islands 



