REMARKS ON RATS 83 



still be such as no free people ought to endure. But 

 it confines itself to nothing. As Waterton says : 

 " After dining on carrion in the filthiest sink, it 

 will often manage to sup on the choicest dainties of 

 the larder, where like Celoeno of old vestigia foeda 

 relinquit." It kills chickens, plunders the nests of 

 little birds, devouring mother, eggs and young, 

 murders and feeds on its brothers and sisters and 

 even its own offspring, and not infrequently tastes 

 even man when it finds him asleep. The bite of a 

 rat is sometimes very poisonous, and I have had to 

 give three months' sick leave to a clerk who had 

 been bitten by one. Add to this that the rat multi- 

 plies at a rate which is simply criminal, rearing a 

 family of perhaps a dozen every two or three 

 months, and no further argument is needed to justify 

 the war which has been declared against it. Every 

 engine of war will, no doubt, be brought into use, 

 traps of many kinds, poisons, cats, the professional 

 rat-catcher, and a rat bacillus which, if once it 

 gets a footing, is expected to originate a fearful 

 epidemic. 



But I need not linger any more among rats, which 

 are not my subject. I am writing in the hope that 

 this may be an opportune time to put in a plea for 

 a much persecuted native of this and many other 

 countries, whose principal function in the economy 

 of nature is to kill rats and mice. The barn, or 

 screech, owl, which is found over a great part of 

 Europe and Asia and also in America, was once 



