70 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. | CHAP. VII. 
of the harbours and rocks on the shore, and issuing out in great 
numbers towards nightfall, to feed on the stinking remains of 
the fish. 
They have been seen migrating from these places at the end 
of the fishing-season in compact bodies and in immense numbers. 
They then spread themselves, an invading host, amongst the 
farm-houses and stack-yards in the neighbourhood; repairing 
again to the coast for the benefit of a fish diet and sea air, when 
their wonderful instinct tells them that the fishing-season has 
again commenced. But I really must finish the subject, or my 
reader will be as tired as I am myself of these accounts of the 
unprincipled greediness and voracity of the Hanoverian or Grey 
Rat, who has made for itself a home in this country, after nearly 
extirpating the original indigenous and much less vile race of 
British rats, 
