GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RATS. 
27 
come across a litter of young pigs^ and the opportunity offers, 
they will chump them up like sweetmeats. Consequently 
the male rat, however disgusting, must not be individually 
condemned for murder and cannibalism. 
A writer in the "Zoologist" says that he was once an 
eyewitness to an act of affection on the part of a female rat ; 
which he thought worth recording, more especially as the rat 
is considered to have little in its character to recomniend it. 
Some persons, who were cutting a field of barley, mowed 
over a rat's nest full of young ones, when the mother, who 
was suckling them, instead of running away, remained in the 
nest, and, in her anxiety for their preservation, actually laid 
so fast hold of the scythe that she was obliged to be shaken 
off. This nest was made in a slight depression of the ground, 
and not under the ground, as usually is the case. 
The same gentleman gives another instance of considerable 
cunning and courage evinced by a water-rat. He was 
walking by a brook one day, and saw a water-rat run 
past on the opposite bank in great haste. Almost imme- 
diately afterwards came a very fine stoat, hot in pursuit, but 
evidently running by scent. Backwards and forwards ran 
both animals within a certain space for upwards of ten 
minutes, when both made a dead pause within a yard of each 
other, and he expected to see the rat fall a prey every mo- 
ment. But such was not the case ; for, in an instant, 
she rushed forward upon the stoat with such open-mouthed 
fury, that he ran away, and she in turn became the pursuer ; 
nor was she content until she had driven her voracious 
enemy fairly out of the neighbourhood. There is no doubt 
that the rat was a female which had young, and was prompted 
by maternal affection to display the courage she did. But 
what surprised him was, that she never retreated to a hole, 
or dived under water, which would have been an almost cer- 
tain mode of escaping danger ; but that would not have 
prevented her wily enemy from scenting out her young. 
The same writer gives another instance of intense affec- 
tion in the rat. Some gintraps were set for the purpose of 
taking vermin. On the following morning a large female 
rat was discovered in one of them, caught by one of her 
fore legs, but squatting over a nest containing six young 
ones. The poor animal, regardless of all pain, during the 
