,>e 



Photograph from Zuschlag 

 OFFICIAL RAT-COLLECTING WAGON IN COPENHAGEN DURING THE PUBLIC CAMPAIGN 



AGAINST THESE RODENTS 



ship of the two is still undetermined. 

 Owing to the fact that rats haunt drains, 

 garbage deposits, and other accumula- 

 tions of filth, it is unquestionably a poten- 

 tial distributor of diphtheria, typhoid, 

 scarlet fever, and infantile paralysis. 



THIEVES OF FERTILE BRAIN 



Since the early days rats of one species 

 or another have been a burden to man- 

 kind. 



The burdensome abundance of rats in 

 Europe during the Middle Ages is indi- 

 cated by the numerous legends which 

 have come down from that time. The 

 popular folk tale of the Pied Piper of 

 Hamelin and. its variants originated in 

 the thirteenth century. The tales of 

 wicked men being devoured by swarms 

 of rats sent as a punishment for their 

 misdeeds and the account of the death of 

 Bishop Hatto by an attack of these ro- 

 dents in a tower where he had taken 

 refuge run back to the tenth century. 



They were such persistent pests at that 

 time and so difficult to control that many 

 efforts were made to rid communities of 



them. They were anathema and persist- 

 ent efforts were made to ban them by 

 bell and book, as well as through exor-: 

 cisms and other mystic ways of the 

 "Black Arts." 



A translation of an old Gaelic exorcism 

 against these rodents might well express 

 the farmers' feelings at the present day. 

 One stanza reads : 



"No corn in sheaf, nor barley snugly stacked. 

 Could serve thy turn ; but all my garnered 



grain, 

 In well-filled sacks, is next by thee attacked. 

 And all is spoiled, thou thief of fertile brain; 

 And all my sacks are nibbled, too, and holed— 

 A sight most aggravating to behold." 



In 1745 the first modern attempt to 

 control the rat pest by law was made in 

 the English colony of Barbados, in the 

 West Indies. Another law was passed in 

 1880, on the West Indian island of An- 

 tigua. 



Since that date increasing appreciation 

 of the enormous economic losses caused 

 by these animals, as well as the discovery 

 that rats are primarily responsible for the 

 distribution of bubonic plague and other 



15 



