IO 



THE ATLANTIC SLOPE NATURALIST. 



was brought to America where it has in- 

 vaded every part of the civilized portions 

 of the Union, and is estimated to destroy 

 about $4,500,000 worth of property 

 yearly. 



There is scarcely a thing that man eats 

 which the rat will not devour, and as well 

 they will eat many things that man con- 

 siders refuse. Leather, horn, bone, the 

 bark of trees and all other vegetable sub- 

 stances, including valuable grains and 

 fruits ; and furthermore, what they do not 

 eat they gnaw and ruin. 



Shipping is badly injured by rats, and 

 all ships are infested , and it is by this means 

 that these pests are transported all over 

 the globe. When Dr. Kane's ship was 

 frozen in near the 80th parallel, North 

 latitude, during his arctic explorations, the 

 rats increased so rapidly that they caused 

 grievous damage. Go where you will, by 

 land or sea, and you will find rats. There 

 are hundreds of species on the globe, but 

 most of them are locally distributed, and 

 only one, the common brown rat, has be- 

 come a veritable cosmopolitan nuisance. 

 The mouse is a good second, and from 

 its smaller size does some damage which 

 a larger animal could not find means of 

 accomplishing. 



In their natural state rats are sometimes 

 subject to a strange affliction which causes 

 the tails of several rats to grow together, 

 and they form the so-called king-rat. One 

 can see in European museums these pecu- 

 liar agglomerations, for it is true that we 

 may sometimes meet with a group of rats 

 joined together by their tails. It is be- 

 lieved that a contagious disease causes an 

 exudation of serum on the surface of the 

 tails, and in consequence of this serum 

 forming into cell tissues the tails coalesce 

 and grow together. No less a renowned 

 authority than Brehm, the celebrated 

 naturalist, tells us that in Altberg, Ger- 

 many, there is preserved the remains of a 

 King Rat which is formed of twenty-seven 

 different rats, and many others have been 

 found. This is a kind of grafting, so to 

 speak, which is wholly without a parallel, 

 so far as I can learn. 



A Morning in South Florida 

 By W. J. Hoxie, Fort Myers, Florida. 



It is too bad that visitors to this garden 

 spot of "Continental United States" most 

 all take their northward flight so early. 

 The winter tourist sees Florida at its 

 worst. The Spring lingerer gets its full 

 glory. 



This morning I turned out just as the 

 morning star rose. The big dipper swung 

 low in the tops of the pines, and far off in 

 a little bunch of cypress a chuck-wills 

 widow was singing the last few bars of 

 his nightly serenade. Then there was a 

 few minutes of dead silence. The fog 

 rose a little way from the ground making 

 a white stretch across the forest with the 

 high branches showing black against the 

 sky, and the masses of lower growth com- 

 ing out slowly and distinctly below it. 

 Then up from the westward prairie arose 

 the rattling cry of a sandhill crane. Rap- 

 idly — two or three times — it rang out 

 above the stillness, waiting, it seem to be, 

 for an answer. At last it came. A big 

 turkey gobbler along the other side of the 

 river responded, and a lark woke up just 

 as the east began to flush. Grackles, 

 quail, crows and cardinals soon joined in, 

 but until after breakfast the larks were 

 the dominant feature of the whole melody. 



Just as the sun peeped up I was away 

 for the river. First came a long stretch of 

 scrub saw palmettos from knee to shoul- 

 der high. Much of it is in bloom now. 

 So also are the air plants, perfect dreams 

 in scarlet, orange and purple, that crowd 

 every solitary tree that is strong enough 

 to hold them up. Wherever a space is 

 free from scrub it is filled with pink, 

 white and yellow flowers of varieties quite 

 unfamiliar to my eyes and which I cannot 

 get time to study and identify. 



In sandy spots gophers have buried 

 their eggs, and often the chewed up shells 

 show where pole-cats have dug them up. 

 The scrub ends abruptly at a ridge of 

 tall cabbage palmettos, and a mile of 

 deep braze and fog extends clear to the 

 mangroves at the bank of the Caloosa- 

 hatchee. Here the seaside finches are 

 just fairly warbling the whole atmosphere 



