WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



England it spread so curiously, for of course 

 where the disease appeared depended chiefly 

 on which houses were infested with rats and 

 which were not. At that tinae rats had a 

 much better chance of spreading the disease 

 than they have now, for the town houses were 

 chiefly wooden ones into which the rats could 

 make their way with very little trouble. 

 Besides, the ' black ' or ' Old English ' rat 

 was much more of a house rat than our too 

 common brown rat is. It was a better climber, 

 and a more active mouse-like creature than 

 the latter. Moreover, people were not so par- 

 ticular in those times as we are now; they 

 accepted rats in the house as a matter of course, 

 and a few fleas did not worry them. In early 

 times it was dirt, not cleanliness, which was 

 'next to godliness'; too much washing was 

 not the fashion in any class of life, so no wonder 

 the plague had every chance of spreading, for 

 they little dreamt that it was the rats which 

 scampered about so merrily that were the 

 bearers of disease and death. 



But the black rat's good time in this country 



did not last for ever. Just as it had come from 



the East, so in the middle of the eighteenth 



century there appeared in Europe, and soon 



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