Practical Game-Preserving. 350 



frequently confounded with the practically harmless Water- 

 Vole, the latter is as often made to suffer for the misdeeds 

 of its distant relative. 



It is of a greyish-brown colour on the upper and outer, 

 and a greyish dirty white on the opposite surfaces of its 

 body. The muzzle is elongated, but the upper jaw does 

 not project to a very great extent, while the whiskers are soft 

 and not very prominent. The average size of a full-grown 

 rat is from loin, to nin. without the tail, which measures 

 from Sin. to 8 Jin., thus being about four-fifths the length 

 of the body ; the ears are very prominent, and in a full- 

 grown specimen are about fin. long; the tail proves, on 

 close examination, to be a wonderfully constructed 

 appendage. The female is slightly smaller than the male. 



The rat's voracity is undeniable. Its food is of every 

 sort and shape. Its chief means of subsistence, however, 

 are found in grain, and in nearly all the products in 

 which grain is employed. Meat, also, of every kind, and 

 vegetables of many sorts, together with every conceivable 

 substance, from old leather to green peas, form at some 

 time or another food for the Brown Rat. It is also of a 

 cannibalistic turn when one or more of its kind are 

 injured or in difficulties in a gin, for instance. Strangely 

 enough, the male rats far outnumber the female, being 

 numerically about seven to one, and to this fortunate 

 circumstance we owe the fact that rats are not more 

 abundant than they are. 



Rats which inhabit the network of sewers in the 

 metropolis and other large towns are of the same species 

 as those which frequent the barns, houses, and corn-ricks, 

 hedgerows, drains, and ditches and river banks, although 

 the former are generally of larger size, altogether fiercer, 

 and exceed what is called the " barn " rat in voracity 

 and boldness. 



