363 Ground Vermin. 



exit. Fig. 56, where the same lettering is followed, shows 

 a front view of the trap when shut. 



The " Break-Back " rat-trap is an excellent trap for 

 rats; when properly used it is very efficacious in catching 

 those that have purloined game-chicks or the like, by bait- 

 ing with a piece of meat, &c. Its adoption, too, in barns 

 and similar houses as a trap which may always be kept 

 set, owing to its conspicuousness, can also be advised, and 

 as a general addition to the usual stock of gins it is by no 

 means to be disparaged. 



Whilst the employment of poison in whatever form for 

 destroying vermin in general, and rats in particular, has 

 little or nothing to recommend it, no objection can be 

 taken to the use of the Virus recently brought out for 

 destroying rats and mice. This is a bacterial growth upon 

 gelatine, which contains the germs of a disease rapidly 

 fatal amongst rats and mice. Fed to them in prepared 

 form upon bread or corn, the vermin consume the bait, 

 and become infected with the germs of the disease, which 

 in from eight to fourteen days proves fatal. Rats infected 

 with it communicate the disease to others of their kind, 

 which also die. It is, however, perfectly harmless to 

 human beings and all other creatures except rats and mice. 

 For this reason there is no objection to its employment. 



The Virus I have used, and with unvarying success, is 

 that known as the Liverpool Rat Virus, prepared by 

 Messrs. Evans, Lescher, and Webb, Limited, of Hanover 

 Street, Liverpool. Both in and around dwelling-houses 

 and outbuildings, stacks, and everywhere rats congregate, 

 I have found that with two, or at the most three, dressings, 

 they have entirely disappeared. I have also used it in 

 covert and hedgerow with a like result, and am sure that 

 no more effective and wholesale manner of ridding a place 

 of rats is available at the present time. 



