VERMIN AND TRAPPING 77 
kill one rat, half a dozen come to its funeral; but 
I expect they would come, funeral or no funeral. 
At any rate, the more rat funerals the better for 
game. I found that if I got my rats down very 
early in the spring, I was sure to have another 
stock by the time the pheasants and partridges 
were nesting, which, of course, is the time when 
rats do most damage, and when, for obvious reasons, 
you cannot do much to destroy them without doing 
nearly as much harm to game interests as would 
the rats themselves. My plan was to wait till the 
end of March. Where there are many rats—one 
way and another we destroyed about five thousand 
a year—there is only one way to make anything 
like a clean sweep of them, and that is by poison- 
ing or otherwise dosing them. Trapping alone is 
useless, for while one is catching a score hundreds 
escape. I would make the most careful search for 
burrows or other signs of rats over every inch, so 
to speak, of my ground: this would take two of us 
ten days. Wherever we found the smallest sign 
of the work of rats we left ample medicine to go 
round, and for any tourists that might callin. Also, 
when a burrow showed no sign of present occupa- 
tion, we would leave a meal ready for prospective 
tenants. To deal with rats successfully the treat- 
ment must be generous and thorough. It is 
useless to half poison them, or rather to poison 
half of them. Let the margin be always on the 
