Quadrupeds. 293 



Notes on some Peculiarities in the Manners of the Water Rat. 

 By the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, B.A. 



During my under-graduateship at Cambridge, I used occasionally 

 to amuse myself with pistol- shooting; and when tired of perforating 

 the mark on the tree, or in the gravel-pit, would bend my steps to the 

 river or ditches, on the banks of which I was pretty sure to find abun- 

 dance of water-rats. On one of these occasions I first noticed a 

 peculiarity in the habits of the water-rat, which I have since seen ex- 

 hibited in various places and at various times. This peculiarity re- 

 sembles what in man is called " loss of presence of mind ; " — what it 

 is to be called in the rat, I do not know. 



In the excursions above mentioned, I made use of a pocket pistol 

 almost as frequently as of that more unerring instrument, the double- 

 sighted, hair-triggered, duelling pistol ; and, consequently, I missed 

 my mark more frequently than I hit it. 



Armed with this weapon on the occasion in question, I espied a rat 

 sitting on the bank of a ditch : I fired at and missed it, but it scarcely 

 moved. I reloaded — and it is a work of time to load a pocket pis- 

 tol — fired again, and with the same result. Six times did I reload, 

 and seven times did I fire, before the persecuted animal made an at- 

 tempt to escape. If, after a shot, it moved at all, it seemed to do so 

 unconsciously, and only a few inches, and then stopped again. After 

 the seventh shot it rather fell than jumped into the water, but did not 

 attempt to dive, as they almost invariably do when disturbed at any 

 distance from their hole, but swam slowly along by the side. A stone 

 I threw took effect on its head, and I succeeded in getting it out ; but 

 on looking at it closely, I could not find the least trace of injury in- 

 flicted by either of my balls : all its powers, beyond the merely me- 

 chanical ones, seemed to have been completely paralyzed by terror at 

 the first report. 



If any suspicion had remained in my mind, as to the possibility of 

 the first ball having grazed its head, and produced this idiotcy (if 1 

 may so use the word), it would have been effectually removed by sub- 

 sequent experience. Nor can it be said "perhaps it was a young one, 

 and not come to * years of discretion.'" It was an old rat and of large 

 size : and moreover, the largest water-rat I ever saw in my life, be- 

 trayed, under similar circumstances, the same symptoms. The last- 

 mentioned, too, had even more abundant and inviting opportunities of 

 escape than the former. I was in a " funny," — as the small boats at 

 Cambridge are called, — on the Cam, floating slowly down the stream, 



