58 
THE RAT. 
to take any interest in the creature, lie procured it with little 
difficulty, and brought it to England. But before he left 
Calcutta he made every inquiry as to the probable age of this 
tortoise, and ascertained, from a variety of corroborative cir- 
cumstances, that it could not be less than two hundred years 
old. On his arrival in England, Captain Gooch had the old 
tortoise put into the coach-house, at his seat near Clapham 
Common. There for a short time it did well ; but one morn- 
ing, nothing was found of it but its shell, the poor old tor- 
toise having been killed in the night, and devoured by rats. 
Mr. Jesse relates an extraordinary instance of the sagacity 
and foresight of rats, and, wonderful as it may appear, he 
says it may be relied upon, for he received it from a person 
of the strictest veracity, who was an eye-witness to the fact. 
A box containing some bottles of Florence oil was placed in 
a store-room which was seldom opened : the box had no lid 
to it. On going to the room one day for one of the bottles, 
the pieces of bladder and cotton which were at the mouth of 
each bottle had disappeared, and a considerable quantity of 
the contents of the bottles had been consumed. The circum- 
stance having excited surprise, a few bottles were filled with 
oil, and the mouths of them secured as before. Next morning 
the coverings of the bottles had been removed, and some of 
the oil w^as gone. However, upon watching the room, which 
vv^as done through a little window, some rats were seen to 
get into the box, and insert their tails into the necks of the 
bottles ; and then withdrawing them, they licked off the oil 
which adhered to them. 
A friend of the author's lately received from a kind indi- 
vidual, resident in a foreign country, a package containing a 
few bottles of salad oil of the most delicious kind, a present 
which, to say nothing of the respect that was shown to him, 
afforded him unspeakable delight, being an ardent admirer 
of this sort of dainty. The bottles, which were carefully 
sealed, were placed in the apartment allotted for eatables, 
there to lie safely, as was supposed, till wanted. A few days 
lifter, our friend had a great desire to have another look at 
the present, and so betook himself to the pantry, when he 
found, to his surprise and indignation, that a nice little hole 
had been made in all the bungs, and some of the contents 
extracted from each of the bottles. There was something 
