VII 

 THE BARN OWL 



A FRIEND OF MAN 



A thunderstorm has burst on the common rat. 

 Its complicity in the spread of the plague, which 

 has been proved up to the hilt, has filled the cup of 

 its iniquities to overflowing, and we have awakened 

 to the fact that it is and always has been an arch- 

 enemy of mankind. Simultaneously, in widely 

 separated parts of the world, a " pogrom " has been 

 proclaimed, and the accounts of the massacre which 

 come to us from great cities like Calcutta and 

 Bombay are appalling and almost incredible. They 

 would move to pity the most callous heart, if pity 

 could be associated with the rat. But it cannot. 



The wild rat deserves that humane consideration 

 to which all our natural fellow-creatures on this earth 

 are entitled ; but the domestic rat (I use this term 

 advisedly, for though man has not domesticated it, 

 it has thoroughly domesticated itself) cannot justify 

 its existence. It is a fungus of civilisation. If it 

 confined itself to its natural food, the farmer's 

 grain, the tax which it levies on the country would 



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