264 
THE RAT. 
root, or a dozen drops of anise seed. Then, to preserve it, 
put into wide-nioutlied jars, and fasten it down air-tight 
with oil-skin or bladder." 
This paste should be spread on slices of bread, and placed 
near the holes where the rats pass ; taking care that they 
are constantly renewed as they are consumed. 
Here let me draw your attention to the imprudent 
use of poisons, which may be as fatal to human beings 
as they are to meaner animals. Indeed, where is your 
own personal safety, if you yourselves purchase the means 
that, in the hands of a domestic enemy, might prove not 
only your destruction, by poisoning your food or draught, but 
be the means of branding you with suicide, on the simple 
evidence which the murderer himself might adduce, that 
you were the actual purchaser of the fatal drug. In this 
refined age of scientific murdering, pray who is safe that has 
a purse in his pocket or a pound to bequeath 1 Then, again, 
as to accidents, it was only very lately that the papers re- 
ported a case wherein a girl had been killed through fool- 
ishly swallowing two or three pills that had been purchased 
of some neighbouring vendor for the poisoning of mice ; 
and upon a post-mortem examination the pills were found 
to contain strychnine. Is it not alarming that quack doc- 
tors, peddling apothecaries, and patent medicine vendors 
should ransack pharmacopoeias for the most deadly drugs, 
merely to poison a poor little mouse 1 In a word, can the 
law of the land be said to be a security for human life, 
while this state of things is allowed ? Then, is it not time 
that the voice of the country were raised, not only against 
the unnecessary use of poisons, but to petition the legislature 
to pass laws, placing not only a most rigid limitation on the 
mere sale of them, but imposing heavy penalties also upon 
persons for the bare possession of them without a govern- 
ment license ? What do we want with such things, either 
for rats, mice, beer, teas, wines, or candles 1 But no matter 
the motive; the excuse ever has been, that they were required 
for the destruction of vermin. That excuse should no longer 
be held valid, since phosphoric compounds will answer every 
end for which such things could be applied, so far as the de- 
struction of vermin is concerned : and as to human beings, 
it could never be placed either in their food or drink withou/t 
