732 



The Destruction of Rats. [dec, 



though they go with young for six weeks they have several 

 litters in the year, each litter comprising from six to fourteen 

 young. Rats therefore increase in numbers very rapidly if 

 sufficient food is available. It has been calculated that in 

 India, where they breed all the year round, the offspring of 

 a single pair would, if supplied with sufficient food and left 

 unchecked, amount at the end of one year to thirty-five 

 thousand. Fortunately such favourable conditions are never 

 present. 



Rats are omnivorous feeders, and when desperate with 

 hunger are even cannibals, but they are by choice dependent 

 on the food supplies which man prepares for himself and his 

 domestic animals, or on the waste of such food. Many esti- 

 mates have been made of the damage done by the rat 

 population of Great Britain in a single year, but as these 

 estimates are based on the assumption that the supplies con- 

 sumed by rats would otherwise be available for human use 

 or consumption the reasoning is unsound. It is, however, 

 generally admitted that the damage done is incalculable. Rats 

 frequent dwelling houses (generally only the lower floors), 

 barns, granaries, poultry yards, slaughter houses, sewers, and 

 other places where food supplies are stored, or the waste is 

 thrown away. They also frequent rabbit warrens, and take 

 to the fields when food is to be found there, returning to 

 shelter and to breed in corn stacks in the autumn. 



Apart from the food consumed by rats, much damage is 

 done to buildings, floors, and other kinds of woodwork from 

 their power of gnawing holes and passage ways. It is also 

 known that the disease called plague may be spread to human 

 beings by fleas from infected rats. 



It is, therefore, highly desirable, both from an economic 

 and a sanitary point of view, that rats should as far as possible 

 be destroyed. It would , of course, be well if they could be 

 entirely exterminated in Great Britain, but this is practically 

 an impossibility. During the period of nearly two hundred 

 years that has elapsed since the Brown Rat was introduced 

 into this country, it has penetrated to the remotest parts of 

 the British Islands, and is to be found in many ruined build- 

 ings and other places from which it would be difficult to 

 dislodge it. Since rats can live on garbage, travel over wide 



