( 352 ) 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



MAMMALIA. 

 Do Rats eat the Eggs of Poultry? — Eeferring to the query of Mr. 

 Steele Elliott in the ' Zoologist ' (ante, p. 312), I have kept poultry 

 for some years in a wood through which runs a considerable stream, 

 and have been at times much troubled by these rodents, and have 

 ■even found them asleep in the nest-boxes ; yet I have never actually 

 witnessed this propensity on the part of Rats to which Mr. Elliott 

 refers, although it is a popular belief with poultry-keepers that they 

 do eat eggs. This much, however, may be said with confidence, that 

 the habit, at least in some districts, is not general. — E. P. Butter- 

 field (Wilsden, Yorks.). 



Rats and Eggs. — The question raised by Mr. J. Steele Elliott 

 concerning the removal of eggs by Rats recalls an incident of my 

 boyhood. Our poultry-house was adjacent to a large barn. One 

 year some Ducks nested in the poultry-house, and we soon had good 

 reason to suspect that Rats were eating the eggs, by finding a 

 " sucked " one at the mouth of a hole which apparently went through 

 the wall and under the barn floor. My father, in the hope to obtain 

 direct evidence that Rats had actually removed eggs from the 

 poultry-house, had some of the barn flooring opposite to the hole 

 taken up ; at about three yards from the hole we found egg-shells 

 and two or three intact eggs near a rats' nest. I showed Mr. Elliott's 

 note to our museum attendant, who, as he had been at one time 

 storekeeper in a grocery, is well acquainted with the ways of Rats. 

 He is confident that Rats suck and also remove eggs, and mentioned 

 several instances that had come under his notice. He says that he 

 and his friends " use china nest-eggs because the Rats would carry 

 away a real egg if it were left in the nest for a night." He has 

 known Rats to burrow under nests and remove the eggs. — E. W. 

 Swanton (Educational Museum, Haslemere). 



AVES. 

 Yellowhammers' Nest in Rick. — No ornithological work that I 

 have consulted (including 'Yarrell,' fourth edition; Saunders, 'Manual,' 



