PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 39 
leading business firms in Brisbane. He gives the following 
examples of losses:—‘‘One firm lost from £50 to £100 per 
annum from rats until the Departmental Rat Gang came 
to their aid; another lost £35 in goods damaged by rats dur- 
ing a move; another suffered £10 worth of damage from 
these animals in a single night; and a fourth found the ex- 
penditure of £500 in rat-exclusion measures a profitable in- 
vestment.”’ 
Mr. N. G. Sparks, Chief Officer, N.S.W. Fire Brigades, in 
answer to an enquiry of mine, has kindly supplied the fel- 
lewing information as to the role rats and mice may pos- 
sibly play in causing fires. He states that in this State, for 
the four years 1914 to 1917 inclusive, 63 fires were attribut- 
ed to ‘rats and mice at matches,’ distributed as follows :— 
City: 1914, 1; 1915, 6; 1916, 7; 1917, 9—total, 23. Country: 
1914, 9; 1915, 7; 1916, 7; 1917, 17—total, 40. He adds:— 
‘The damage in each case was not extensive, otherwise there 
would have been no proof of the supposed cause. There is 
no record of the breaking down of insulations or short cir- 
cuit of electric wires caused by the action of rats.’’ 
The Distribution and Prevalence of the Common Rats and 
Mice in Australia. 
It is now known that the presence of rats (and possibly, 
but to a much less extent, of mice), is necessary: for the estab- 
lishment of bubonic and septiceemic plague in man. This 
statement does not apply to pneumonic plague, which may 
be directly conveyed from man to man. It is also neces- 
sary that infected rats or mice (or perhaps infected ma- 
terial) should be introduced into the area to start the epi- 
demic in the local rodent population. Such an introduced 
infection cannot lead to an epidemic of the first-mentioned 
types of plague in man in the absence of local rats (and 
mice), or if these are so few in numbers as to prevent a 
reasonably extensive epizootic occurring amongst them. At 
