48 
C H A P T E E Y I. 
DIETETICS OF RATS. 
We now come to that part of JRatology which most con- 
cerns the interests and well-being of the human family, 
namely, the rat's stomach. 
Of all animal stomachs I believe the rat to possess the 
most astounding and convenient one ; for it can adapt the 
intestines to every kind of digestible substance that chance 
or locality produces. Rats will eat all kinds of grain or fari- 
naceous food, from a sago or tapioca pudding, hot or cold, 
with or without sauce, down to horse-beans, peas, or coarsest 
barley or pea meal, including all kinds of pastry, from the 
choicest cheese-cakes or custards down to the commonest 
hot or cold cross-bun or sailor's biscuit. 
As for j5sh, rats have no mercy on them. They will eat 
^11 kinds of small fry, heads, tails, bodies, bowels, bones and 
all, from the delicate whitebait or smelt down to the rusty 
red-herring of Scotland. Indeed, nothing comes amiss to 
them, from the whale to the shrimp. Hence arises the cause 
of their locating, during the summer months, at the water- 
side. 
In the " Sporting Magazine " there is a grave series of 
charges brought by a gentleman against rats for their 
depredations among corn, game, and lish. In speaking of 
the last, he says : " There is another and most serious 
€vil occasioned by rats ; that is, the destruction of fish 
in streams, pools, and stews, where fish are preserved." 
He says few persons have any notion of the quantity of 
rats that frequent these places. He does not mean the more 
innocent, brown, short-eared, small, bright-eyed, and pretty- 
looking water-vole, but the coarse, fierce, grey when old, 
Norway, farmer's rat, the frequenter of houses, buildings, 
ricks, hedges, plantations, brooks, pools, and every place 
under the heavens ; while the vole, neither in winter nor 
summer, ever deserts the water, but on a summer's evening 
may be seen quietly seated by the side of the stream, 
