715 A. BH. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands. 303 
of the woods, to your houses, six, seven, or eight in a company : 
then lt was in every bodie’s mouth, that the Cats had destroyed the 
Rats, and some said that the coldnesse of Winter killed them. I 
remember indeede that we-had a very colde time a little before they 
were destroyed, which, (I am persuaded) God in mercy did send for 
the killing of them, nor (as some doe) to the Traps, nor to the ruinat- 
ing of the Islands with fire ; and take heede that your unthankful- 
ness bring them not againe, or some other plague as bad.” 
Capt. John Smith, in his General History, 1624, gave a detailed 
account of these rats, compiled chiefly from the works of Butler and 
Hughes, but with a few additions from other sources.* Among 
other items he stated that every man was enjoyned to set twelve 
traps and some set nearly a hundred, which they visited twice each 
night, and that they used ratsbane, and both cats and dogs in large 
numbers, setting fire, and various other devices, ‘‘but could not 
prevaile, finding them still increasing against them; nay they so 
devoured the fruits of the earth that they were destitute of bread 
for a year or two.” He also discussed the various supposed causes 
of their sudden death, and objected to the theory that it was due to 
cold, for he said that “they wanted not the feathers of young birds 
and chickens which they daily killed, and Palmetto mosse to builde 
themselves warm nests out of the wind; as usually they did;t 
neither doth it appeare that the cold was so mortal to them, seeing 
they would ordinarily swimme from place to place, and bee very fat 
even in the midst of winter.” He concluded, therefore, that “there 
was joyned with and besides the ordinary and manifest meanes, a 
more mediate and secret work of God.” 
The real cause of their sudden disappearance, as mentioned above 
(p. 590) was, in all probability, starvation,{ after they had destroyed 
all available sources of food, in consequence of their vast increase. 
This disappearance of food, in the winter, would necessarily cause 
their sudden death, “all in three or four days,” as Mr. Hughes 
stated. A very few, however, seem to have survived, for they have 
* His account has been copied entire in Lefroy’s Memorials, I, and by J. M. 
Jones, in Bull. 25, U. S. Nat. Mus., p. 158. Therefore I have not repeated it 
here, but only give the facts supplementary to the others. 
+In another place he says the nests were built in trees, thus proving that it 
was the wood-rat. 
{It is curious that their starvation was not thought of as the actual cause of 
their death, neither by the early writers nor by Jones and others who have dis- 
cussed this subject in modefn times, especially as Hughes and others recog- 
nized the potency of starvation in the case of the cats and hogs. 
