308 NATURAL HISTORY READER. 



the rats drink sweet-oil. Her husband was an apothecary, 

 and had a number of bottles of sweet-oil, some of which 

 were found nearly empty. They watched, and saw two 

 rats at work upon the bottle. They pulled out the cork, 

 or nibbled through it, and then one of them let his tail 

 down into the bottle, and, soon drawing it out, let his com- 

 rade lick it. Then the comrade took his turn, and dipped 

 in his tail, and the first rat licked that, and so they were 

 as happy as you may see poor little children on wharves 

 around a cask of molasses. The same thing has been de- 

 scribed in the books, but it seems very hard to believe. 

 Naturalists say that these stories "lack confirmation"; 

 but they would hardly be repeated so often if they were 

 not true, and I believe my old friend's account, at any rate. 



6. There is a story of a good woman in England who 

 heard for two nights a terrible hubbub in her cellar, so that 

 she collected her neighbors to defend her. On the third 

 night her maid found that a barrel of sweet wine had been 

 entirely emptied by rats. They had first gnawed through 

 the bung, to drink the wine, and then, as it sunk lower and 

 lower, they had eaten away the whole side of the barrel. 

 The servant-girls declared that "the ghost had taken the 

 wine " ; but, if so, the ghost's teeth made marks exactly like 

 rats' teeth ; and Mr. Buckland still keeps the remains of 

 the cask to show what these little animals can do. 



7. Eats certainly use their tails a great deal, whether 

 they dip them into bottles or not. If you observe a rat 

 climbing, or springing, or rising on his hind legs, you will 

 see that his tail helps him very much. It is thick and 

 strong, and the naturalist Cuvier says that it has as many 

 muscles as the human hand. It seems very surprising that 

 rats should be so clean when they live on such dirty food 

 and in such dirty places. Cats seem to lose some of their 

 instinct of cleanliness when they have to live as rats live ; 

 but rats clean themselves after eating as carefully as the 



