THE GAME BREEDER 



107 



at Five Islands. The water was covered 

 with ducks and the air filled with them 

 While I was placing out the decoys Tom 

 fired twenty shots, many of the ducks 

 nearly falling on me. It being the first 

 day they were young and tame, many of 

 them had never heard a shot before. 



We often get thrills ; at different times 

 in life and from many causes. But for 

 a duck shooter such days as these fill 

 one's cup to overflowing and enable us to 

 drop every care. The day was perfect — 

 the ducks fat and delicious and our bag 

 was ninety-three canvasbacks, redheads 

 and bluebills. 



We have shot together here every sea- 

 son since then but one. But I will never 

 forget a stormy morning last December, 

 1917. We went to a sheltered island for 

 it was quite cold, with a hard northwest 

 wind (our first winter day) and it seemed 

 to me I never saw so many ducks and 



geese. We took a case of shells, but alas 

 — on opening them we found they were 

 No. 8 shot instead of 4's as they should 

 have been. We were three miles from 

 home with ducks coming every five min- 

 utes. 



At noon we had emptied 340 shells when 

 Tom said let's quit, I have all the ducks 

 I want for my own use and some for all 

 my friends at home. This has been a 

 wonderful ten days, Jasper ; I have had 

 many a happy day in the blind with you, 

 and we have made some splendid bags 

 during the many years we have shot to- 

 gether, but this tops them all. I will be 

 with you again next Thanksgiving Day. 

 And how very, very much I wish he 

 could, for Tom was the "salt of the 

 earth." My heart is sad now for I shall 

 hunt no more with him unless there is 

 duck shooting in the great beyond. He 

 died ten days after our last hunt. 



THE HOUSE RAT. 



The Most Destructive Enemy in the World. 



By David E. Lantz, 

 Assistant Biologist, Bureau of Biological Survey. 



A single rat does far less harm in a 

 year than one of the larger mammals, 

 such as a lion, tiger or wolf ; but the 

 large mammals of prey are compara- 

 tively few in number, while rats are ex- 

 ceedingly abundant. North America or 

 any other continent has probably as many 

 rats as people — possibly two or three 

 times as many. The destruction wrought 

 by this vast horde of rodents is far 

 greater than that wrought by lions, tigers, 

 wolves and all other noxious mammals 

 together. 



Injurious insects are enormously de- 

 structive to crops. Probably their com- 

 bined ravages inflict greater economic 

 losses than do those of rats, but no one 

 kind of insect destroys as much. The 

 harm done by any species of insect is 

 usually confined to certain geographic 

 limits, rarely extending over large parts 

 of a continent; that done by the rat ex- 



tends over the whole world. Oceans fail 

 to limit its activities. 



The rat's destructiveness is not ■ con- 

 fined to crops and property ; it menaces 

 human life as well. This rodent is re- 

 sponsible for more deaths among human 

 beings than all the wars of history. Not 

 all the fatal epidemics of the past were 

 bubonic plague, but enough of them have 

 been so identified to show that almost 

 every century of the Christian era has 

 had at least one great pandemic of this 

 scourge which destroyed millions of the 

 world's population. The great plague 

 of London, which killed more than half 

 the inhabitants that did not flee from 

 the city, was by no means the worst out- 

 break recorded. The plague called "black 

 death" devastated Europe for fifty years 

 of the fourteenth century, destroying two- 

 thirds to three-fourths of the population 

 of large territories and one-fourth of 



