THE PEST OF RATS 21 
made in favor of any ‘‘dogge of accompte.’’ Such 
a one was allowed to be kept if ‘‘kenelled or tied 
up or led in a lease.’’ 
As often happens, a fact was clearly ‘per- 
ceived and acted upon beneficially long before 
the philosophy of it was comprehended. 
Rats responsible for the plague. It was 
not until the very end of the last century— 
scarcely a dozen years ago, that the suspected 
truth of the real nature of the plague was dis- 
covered through scientific studies of the disease 
which then appeared in a most threatening 
form in India. It was determined that of the 
several phases of plague the most common is 
that which produces swellings or ‘‘buboes”’ 
on the body of the victim, and hence is called 
bubonic plague. This is rarely communicated 
direct from man to man, but through the me- 
dium of insects which suck the patient’s blood 
and then, filled with the diseased blood in which 
are floating the deadly bacilli (Bacillus pestis) 
which produce the disturbance, pierce the skin 
of some other creature and leave more or less 
of these plague-germs in the puncture. 
Any blood-sucking bug, as, for example, the 
