GOLDEN RULES FOR FARMERS. 
199 
rule says, look after the rats, and the ricks will look after 
themselves. 
Rule 0. — If you would go a joyous man to market, and 
return a rich one, build all your ricks on staddles, and give 
every man, woman, and boy warning, that if they put any- 
thing whatever against the stacks, or under them, so as to 
form a ladder for the vermin, — that instant they are dis- 
charged ; if not, you will find one-half your grain turned into 
rats, which will feed and fatten on the remainder. 
Kule 6. — By putting the above rules into practice, the 
careful farmer will turn his rats into guineas ; while the 
sluggard, by laziness, will turn his guineas into rats. 
As a proof of what I have stated in the last rule, it will be 
necessary to refer you back to two cases only. The first is 
of a farmer at Hanwell, who unthatched one of his ricks to 
decide a rat-match with dogs, for a thigh of mutton ; and off 
which mutton he was to sup, as a return for his kindness. 
The dogs killed 170 each. ; and one of the owners, seeing 
nine rats make their escape into a piece of old wall, 
removed a stone, and drew them out by their tails, and let 
his dog kill them, thereby winning the match by nine rats. 
JSTow the rats that were killed from that one rick alone 
amounted to 349, which, at the wine-glass standard, destroyed 
in six months, or 182 days, no less than 127 bushels of corn ; 
and this corn, at 645. per quarter, would produce £50 16s., 
w^hich would purchase 152 legs of mutton, at ten pounds 
each, costing five shillings and fourpence per stone. 
The truth is, that, with the exception of four days and 
Sundays, the corn these rats were destroying would have 
supplied him with a ten-pound leg of mutton every day in the 
week for six months ; or, to make it more plain, they were 
costing him at the rate of two pounds per week every week 
they were there ; and if this was the state of one rick, pray 
what must have been the state of his entire farm ? Still, to 
what cause shall we attribute this folly and waste 1 The 
truth is. it matters little whether it arose from carelessness 
or laziness ; there was the fact, that those rats were costing 
him at the rate of £100 a year ; and though a rat-catcher 
was living close by, yet nothing induced this farmer to 
disturb them but a dog-match and a slice of mutton. 
