78 TEN YEARS OF GAME-KEEPING 
side of liberality—that is to say, distribute in the 
rat-holes more small doses of poison than. you think 
there are rats. It is slovenly, and besides being 
useless, to put down a big lump of poison here and 
there, with the idea that the rats will come and 
share it amongst themselves. This is what happens : 
a big rat comes upon a large portion of poison, and 
feeds upon it, to the exclusion of would-be sharers 
of the fatal feast, and—dies, but not before he has 
eaten several times as much as was necessary to 
kill him. And so others must go short and—live. 
But when the poison is evenly and thickly dis- 
tributed in small’ but sufficient portions, all the 
rats thereabouts may get a taste, and having got 
it, are likely to be unable to search for more. The 
only case in which it is advisable to put down a 
bumper dose in one spot is when you find a burrow 
containing a tribe of ratlets, which, when they 
begin to run out, are in the habit of using one 
hole. 
I remember dressing a thick ivy-grown hedge, in 
which I reckoned there were at least two hundred 
rats. On one side there was wheat about a foot 
high, which the rats looked like clearing; they 
nipped off the stems, fed on the joints, and left the 
rest to waste. I took much time and trouble not 
to leave a single hole undressed. And it paid me: 
for they were the only strong colony of rats on 
that farm, having been attracted by the holding 
