66 
THE RAT. 
great quantities of corn, beans, peas, and other articles of 
agricultural produce; and as it is extremely prolific, it often 
inflicts serious injuries. When provisions fall short it 
migrates, sometimes in large bodies, to a more favourable 
situation ; and when settled in a place where its supply of 
food is ample, it rapidly increases to an astonishing extent." 
The compiler of the " Rural Cyclopedia " states that 
it is very destructive to chickens, rabbits, young pigeons, 
ducks, and various other domestic animals. Eggs also are a 
favourite article of food with rats, and are sought with great 
eagerness ; in fact, every thing that is eatable falls a prey to 
their voracity, and can scarcely be secured from their perse- 
vering and audacious inroads. He then quotes an extract 
from the " Agricultural Journal," wherein a gentleman is 
complaining that rats of an extraordinary size and fierceness 
troop about his old house at night, with a clatter which a 
little imagination and the stillness of the hour magnify into 
charges of cavalry. He also states that his little pigs were 
torn from their mother and devoured, in despite of the formid- 
able defence of the old sow. Nor was it possible to calculate 
anything like the quantity of grain consumed by them. 
The amusing compiler of the " Natural History of the 
Highlands," states that nothing will keep out these animals 
when they have once established themselves in our houses. 
He says they gnaw through stone, lead, or almost anything ; 
they may be extirpated for a time, but you suddenly find your- 
self invaded with a fresh army. Some old rats acquire such a 
carnivorous appetite, that old or young fowls and ducks, 
pigeons, rabbits, and poultry of all kinds, fall a prey to them. 
Adepts in climbing as well as in undermining, they get at 
every thing, dead or alive ; they reach game, although care- 
fully hung in a larder, by climbing the wall, and clinging to 
beam or rope until they get at it. They then devour and 
destroy all that can be reached. He has frequently known 
them in this manner to destroy a larder full of game in a 
single night. They seem to commence with the hind legs of 
hares, and eat downwards, hollowing the animal out, as it 
hangs up, until nothing but the skin remains. In the fields 
to which these rats betake themselves in the summer time, 
not only corn, but game and eggs of all kinds fall to their 
share. That they carry ofi* hen's and even turkey's eggs to a 
