THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 623 



eels ; ^ in cultivated lands, all sorts of leaves, stems, flowers, 

 roots,^ or grain ; in towns and houses, milk, butter, cheese, 

 bread, flour, jam, and refuse of all sorts ; on roads, the 

 undigested portions in the droppings of animals ; in game 

 preserves, dovecots, or farmyards, young pheasants, pigeons, 

 ducks, or poultry ; in old walls, snails, rejecting the shells ; * in 

 meadows, grass-seed ; ^ in orchards, fruit ; ^ in warrens, young 

 rabbits.® Everywhere and at all times young, small, or weakly 

 vertebrates ^ are hunted with a ferocity suggestive of a lust for 

 killing, since the victims are often left uneaten. Wherever 

 domestic animals feed or are fed, a host of these marauders 

 attends to assist in the meal or clear away the leavings. One 

 result of this ubiquity is that it is of very little use for one 

 person to trap and destroy them. Those killed amid the flesh- 

 pots of a farmyard simply leave vacancies for their ravenous 

 brethren of the barer fields. 



It is quite marvellous how they discover where animals are 

 fed. They even find their way into mines.* Barrett- Hamilton 

 saw them chasing birds coming to feed on crumbs in times of 

 snow, and they will take the water to quarrel with water-fowl 

 at feeding time. 



' Lamperns— E. Brown, Zoologist, 1843, 212. Eels — J. Hardy, Zoologist, 1846, 

 1364 ; R. Lydekker, Royal Natural History j Shipley, op. cit., 65. 



^ Swedes— R. M. Barrington {Zoologist, 1878, 178) and many others have pointed 

 out that in eating a swede, which they prefer to a turnip, rats gnaw right round the 

 root, ending (if they do not pass on to another one) in the centre ; they also bite oif 

 and reject bits of the rind, which lie conspicuously on the ground. Hares are also 

 said to reject the rind (H. Miller, Zoologist, 1878, 100), but they and rabbits differ 

 from rats in gnawing right through the root from one side to the other. Another and 

 safer method of distinction would be afforded by the size of the marks made by the 

 incisors of the three rodents. 



' Snails— Merrifield, Sketch of the Natural History of Brighton, 157 ; Harting, 

 Zoologist, 1887, 190, Rambles in Search of Shells, 73, and Vermin of the Farm, 4. 



* Hence a handful of "hay-seed" is a very useful thing for sprinkling over rat- 

 traps. 



' Climbing the trees for apples and cherries {Field, vol. 78, 660) ; morella cherries, 

 J. B. EUman, Zoologist, 1848, 2223. 



° Hence rabbit-trappers have frequently to kill off the rats in rabbit burrows 

 before they can secure the conies. Puffin Island, off Anglesey (Robert Stephenson), 

 and the Skerries, near Holyhead, are said to have had their stocks of rabbits 

 destroyed by rats which escaped from shipwrecks (Pattisson in Bell, ed. 2, 313). 



' Smaller rats— R. M. Barrington, Field, 1875, 4662. For conflicts between rats 

 and hedgehogs— the former not always being the aggressors, see p. 62 above. 



' " Coal-mines "-G. Roberts, Wakefield, Zoologist, 1867, 553. 



