BATS AS HUMAN FOOD. 
129 
thiDg ; but, on the contrary, witli all its depredations, 
the farmer's rat is one of the most pretty, cleanly, 
active little animals that ranges our dwellings, fields, and 
forests, and possesses a skin even more soft, glossy, and 
flexible than the best Genoa velvet. And as for the dispo- 
sition of the young, if you saw them around a rick on a 
moonlight night, or a bright summer's morn, skipping and 
playing, and going through a variety of little gambols, with 
all the cheerfulness and innocence of lambs or kittens, 
you would scarce believe your eyes, or that they were 
in truth the so universally-despised creatures which, in 
England, every man, woman, and child holds in such fear and 
abhorrence. 
Yes, you say ; but look at an old sewer-rat ! This is not 
a fair view ; for take any ill-used, ill -housed creature in the 
winter of life, and what shall we find 1 Why, that tlie bloom 
of health is sapped and faded — the fire of the eye burned 
down to the lingering embers — the vigorous elasticity and 
buoyancy of youth grown into fretful and restless decrepi- 
tude, and a general declining of the whole being to that 
" bourn from which no traveller returns." 
Can you then tell me what there is more condemnatory 
in a rat growing rusty with age, than in any other creature 
doing so ? But let us proceed. 
It appears to me a sound logical conclusion to arrive at, 
that if in France rats' skins are French kid, then their car- 
casses must of necessity be French kids ; or if you prefer it 
we will say Norwegian kids, or Hanoverian kids ; or perhaps 
it may suit you better to call them British kids. Then let 
us see how the despised rat-catcher will be affected thereby in 
the scale of estimation ; for, instead of the despicable title he 
now bears, he would be styled the French or Norwegian kid- 
hunter ; while others would maintain that he was a Hano- 
verian or British kid-hunter. Now would not either of these 
imaginary titles exalt him into universal admiration, and at 
once place him in bold comparison with that noble race of 
mountaineers, the chamois-hunters of Switzerland ? I think 
it would. At the same time, would not the animal itself be 
divested of nearly all its terrors, and be held in the same 
light as hares, rabbits, squirrels, weasels, &c. 1 We need not, 
liowever, trouble ourselves to find it a more agreeable name 
K 
