THE MUNGOOSE 
the majority of these are beneficial to man, for they 
are the carnivorous beetles which prey upon a 
variety of insect pests. The staple food of rats 
and mice is various kinds of vegetable substances. 
Standing crops are ravaged, and when the grain is 
stored away they voraciously attack and devour it. 
Young, tender plants are eaten off, the bark of fruit 
trees gnawed, and the buds, flowers, and fruit eaten. 
Chickens, the young of domestic pigeons, and even 
baby ostriches are attacked and killed; and barns 
and dwelling-houses are overrun with these de- 
structive rodents; and infectious diseases are 
spread by them. Bubonic plague, we know, is 
spread by a flea which lives upon the rat, and which 
obtains the bacteria which cause the disease from 
the blood of its host. Enteric fever is another 
deadly disease which is spread about the community 
by rats which devour the infected material and get 
their bodies smothered with the microbes of the 
disease. 
Some species of rats and mice do not haunt the 
homesteads of man; they live in the bush-veld, 
karoo and grass-veld, but even there they do much 
mischief in eating up useful vegetation and de- 
vouring vast quantities of seeds which would have 
otherwise grown into plants to nourish the flocks 
and herds of the farmer, in addition to the eggs 
and young of birds and useful carnivorous beetles. 
Then, again, we in South Africa are subject to 
periodic plagues of migratory locusts which invade 
» "9 
