THE PEST OF RATS 11 
“‘The brown rat is practically omnivorous. The 
statement applies as well to the black rat and the 
roof rat. Their bill of fare includes seeds and grains 
of all kinds, flour, meal, and food products made 
from them; fruits and garden vegetables; mush- 
rooms; bark of growing trees; bulbs, roots, stems, 
leaves, and flowers of herbaceous plants; eggs, chicks, 
ducklings, young pigeons, and young rabbits; milk, 
butter, and cheese; fresh meat and carrion; mice, 
rats, fish, frogs, and mussels. This great variety of 
food explains the ease with which rats adapt them- 
selves to almost every environment. 
‘‘Experiments show that the average quantity of 
grain consumed by a full-grown rat is fully 2 ounces 
daily. A half-grown rat eats about as much as an 
adult. Fed on grain, a rat eats 45 to 50 pounds a 
year, worth about 60 cents if wheat, or $1.80 if oat- 
meal. Fed on beefsteaks worth 25 cents a pound, 
or on young chicks or squabs with a much higher 
prospective value, the cost of maintaining a rat is 
proportionately increased. Granted that more than 
half the food of our rats is waste, the average cost 
of keeping one rat is still upward of 25 cents a 
year, 
“Tf an accurate census of the rats of the United 
States were possible, a reasonably correct calculation 
of the minimum cost of feeding them could be made 
from the above data. If the number of rats sup- 
ported by the people throughout the United States 
were equal to the number of domestic animals on the 
farms—horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs—the minimum 
