vn MICE AriD MTS " ' 77 



cleansing and washing can wipe away their traces ? Nothing 

 will keep out these animals when they have once established 

 themselves in a house. They gnaw through stone, lead, or 

 almost anything. They may be extirpated for a time, but you 

 suddenly find yourself invaded by a fresh army. Some old 

 rats, too, acquire such a carnivorous appetite, that fowls and 

 ducks, old or young, pigeons, rabbits, — all fall a prey to them. 

 Adepts in climbing as well as in undermining, they get at 

 everything, dead or alive. They reach game, although hung 

 most carefully in a larder, by climbing the wall, and clinging to 

 beam or rope till they get at it ; they then devour and destroy 

 all that can be reached. I have frequently known them in this 

 manner destroy a larder full of game in a single night. They 

 seem to commence with the hind-legs of the hares, and to eat 

 downwards, hollowing the animal out as it hangs up, till nothing 

 but the skin is left. In the fields, to which the rats betake 

 themselves in the summer time, not only corn, but game, and 

 eggs of all kinds, fall to their share. 



Mr. Waterton says that no house in England has more 

 suffered from the Hanoverian rats than his own ; I don't doubt 

 it — in every sense. The poor water-rat^ is a comparatively 

 harmless animal, feeding principally iipon herbage, not refusing, 

 however, fish, or even toads, when they come in its way. The 

 succulent grasses that grow by the sides of ditches, seem to 

 form its chief food during the summer season. Early, in the 

 spring, before these grasses are well grown, the water-rat preys 

 much on toads. I have found little piles of the feet, and 

 remains of several of these animals, near the edge of water 

 frequented by these rats, which they seem to have collected 

 together in certain places, and left there. I have known the 

 water-rat do great damage to artificial ' dams and the heads 

 of ponds, by undermining them, and boring holes in every 

 direction through them, below the water-mark, as well as above 

 it. The water-rat has peculiarly sensitive organs of scent, and 

 it is therefore almost impossible to trap him, as he is sure to 

 discover the taint of the human hand. Cunning as the house- 

 rat is, this kind is much more so. Though the former may be 

 in a measure kept down by constant trapping, it is a trouble- 



' Arvicola amphibia. Of its two varieties, in Morayshire tlie black water-rat is most 

 common, though the brown is also found, A. agrestis (field vole), Moray.— C. St. J. 



