DESTRUCTION OF RATS. 
85 
the first place, can ten sewer rats eat a pound of beefsteaks for 
breakfast ; that is to say, one ounce and a half each, for the 
eight smallest, and two ounces each for the two largest ? No 
one, I think, will doubt it for a moment. Well, then, we will 
set down ten rats to eat a pound of beefsteaks for breakfast. 
In the second place, we will calculate a fair bullock to weigh 
half a ton ; I mean, without the bones, hoofs, horns, and 
hide ; that is to say, 1,120 pounds of eatable substance. 
Now then 600,000 rats, at ten rats per pound, will eat 
60,000 pounds of beefsteaks for breakfast ; or, what will 
perhaps bring it better within the range of our comprehen- 
sion is, that it will require fifty-three bullocks, at half a ton 
each ; and besides these, there must be 640 pounds more 
cut off the fifty-fourth, to furnish them with a breakfast. 
This, I think, will tend most materially to remove all doubts 
with regard to the thirty-five horses at Montfaucon. 
Here, perhaps, prejudice will cry out, Down with all the 
rats in the universe, and annihilate them !" But reason 
says, Stop — no haste — ^because there are two sides to the 
question ! In the first place, there is no doubt but that 
600,000 rats would consume more than an equivalent to 
fifty -three bullocks and a half for breakfast ; and, in the 
second place, there is no question but that they would eat the 
same amount for supper. Then, on the other hand, it is not 
more than reasonable to suppose that they did not catch one 
half of the rats in the sewers ; but, for reason's sake, we will 
set them down at one-half. That would make altogether, 
with those that were caught and those that escaped, 1,200,000 
rats, which would eat, in animal and vegetable matter, an 
equivalent in weight to 214 bullocks every four-and-twenty 
hours. 
Now let us multiply these by seven, as a week's sustenance 
for the rats in the sewers of Paris, and we shall find it 
amount to 1,498 bullocks, — or, what is equal to it, 749 tons 
of animal and vegetable matter. 
Let us now suppose the rats to be removed for two months 
— say June and July — and what then would be the conse- 
quences 1 Why, that there would be an equivalent to 
11,984 bullocks, or 5,992 tons of animal and vegetable 
matter, rotting and putrefying in the drains and sewers of 
Paris. 
