THE POLICE OF NATURE. 
233 
tells me that for him as he is he would not take a hundred 
sovereigns. 
Jera^ the champion, was a fallow-coloured bull-terrier, 
about eighteen pounds weight, with a head nearly all white, 
and in his general appearance as plain a looking dog as you 
would wish to see, except that he had an unusually long, 
strong, square muzzle. But for steady perseverance and 
powers of execution he has never been equalled. His public 
exploits were numerous. He contended in eighty public 
matches: namely, 20 matches at 20 rats each, 30 matches at 
50 rats each, 28 matches at 100 rats each, and 2 matches 
at 200 rats each ; thus destroying in public 5,100 rats. 
The longest time he took to destroy a single hundred was 
eleven minutes and twenty seconds ; and the shortest was 
five minutes and fifty seconds. This is the quickest time in 
which one hundred sound rats were ever fairly destroyed 
by a single dog. But to add to the wonder, Jem, when he 
had had but ten minutes' rest, was again pitted with a 
second hundred, and in six minutes and one second every 
one lay dead ; thus destroying two hundred fjiir barn rats 
in the short time of eleven minutes and fifty-one seconds, or 
at the rate of seventeen each minute. This I believe to be 
the greatest feat in rat-killing ever performed by a dog. 
The celebrated rat-killer, Billy, who exhibited some thirty 
years since, did not perform anything near the feat of Jem ; 
for though Billy's time, in destroying a hundred rats, is 
stated to have been five minutes and a half, still, let it be 
borne in mind, and I assert it on the testimony of living 
witnesses, that numbers of the rats were dead before the 
dog commenced, and that the whole had been poisoned with 
nux- vomica before being put into the pit. This is the poison 
that rat-catchers give those rats that may sometimes be seen 
crawling about them in the streets. Of course they give 
them but little, or they would die too soon. It has the 
effect of partially or wholly paralysing them, according to 
the quantity they have eaten ; and this is the supposed 
charm that many rat-catchers have over rats to tame them. 
A gentleman, a friend of mine, who witnessed Billy's feat, 
leant over and picked up two or three of the rats that were 
crawling about, and he declares they were perfectly harmless, 
and not able to see. Not only that, but the instant the dog 
