KATS AS HUMAN FOOD. 
131 
Neapolitans and the lazaroni. Tlie journals also inform us 
that there are over 150,000 Chinese in California, who make 
excellent farm- servants, and work very cheaply, because of 
the size, quality, and numbers of the sermulots with which 
the country abounds. 
The " Quarterly Review " tells us that split dried 
sermulots are sold in China as a dainty ; that the chiffon- 
niers of Paris feed on them without reluctance ; and that 
sermulot-pie is not altogether unknown in our own country. 
The gipsies, the writer states, continue to eat such as are 
caught in stacks and barns ; and a distinguished surgeon 
of the present time frequently has them served up at his 
table. He also mentions that the British navy was not 
always so nice as at present ; for an old captain in Her 
Majesty's service told him that on one occasion, when re- 
turning from India, the vessel was infested with sermulots, 
which made great ravages among the biscuits ; and there- 
fore, to make up for the loss, the sailors used to catch all 
they could, and put them into pies, which they considered a 
very great delicacy ; and lastly, he tells us, that at the siege 
of Malta, when the French were hard pressed, sermulots 
fetched a dollar a piece ; but two dollars was given for 
those caught in barns, ricks, or granaries. 
We have a full and clear account recorded by Mr. Wilkie 
Collins, in his "Foot Rambles in Cornwall," how the good 
people of Looe got rid of their ground-pigs or sermulots. He 
says that about a mile out at sea, there rises a green, triangu- 
lar-shaped eminence called Looe Island. Here several years 
since a ship was wrecked. 'Not only was the crew saved, 
but several free passengers of the ground-pig or sermulot 
tribe (which had got on board, nobody knew how, where, or 
when,) were also preserved by their own strenuous exertions, 
and wisely took up permanent quarters on the land of Looo 
Island. In process of time, and in obedience to the laws of 
nature, these ground-pigs, or sermulots, it appears, began to 
increase and multiply so fast that they soon became an 
intolerable nuisance. 
Their numbers not only threatened destruction to the agri- 
cultural produce of the island, but it became a matter of 
great doubt as to the safety of a man going by himself on 
the island, lest he should share the fate of Bishop Hat to, and 
K 2 
