270 
THE RAT. 
few, to allow free passage for the animals. Outside of the 
barrack is a plentiful supply of water and food, such as 
bones and useless offal. The interior of the walls is occupied 
by boards, lumber, and straw, — just such concealment as 
these animals are known to like, — and the whole is covered 
with a movable wooden roof. When it is judged proper to 
destroy them, the passages are stopped at the outside, the roof 
is lifted off, and the boards are taken out. The frightened 
animals run up the wall, when they strike against the i)ro- 
jecting flags, and fall back again. They then run into the 
small holes below ; but these are only just large enough to 
admit their bodies, whilst their tails remain sticking out, a 
secure prize for the men, who go in over the wall ; and by 
this unlucky appendage they suddenly drag them out, and 
fling them to a posse of anxious dogs outside of the fortress^ 
or into a tub of water, where they are soon destroyed. As 
there are not holes enough in the wall inside, the noise and 
uproar soon frighten another division of rats into the vacated 
openings, and these being treated in the same unceremonious 
manner, the whole garrison is thus speedily destroyed. As 
many as seven and eight hundred have been killed in a single 
clearing. 
A Fox in the Loft. — Hats being fond of straw, they 
become very numerous in the lofts where this article is kept 
for singeing bacon, and they cut it into short pieces with 
their teeth, which renders it useless for this purpose. A 
bacon merchant tried the effect of putting a pet fox into 
the loft to mount guard, and it was found that he killed 
such numbers of the rats, that four more were procured 
to garrison the place, instead of one. 
A Fox in the Barn. — A Scotch gentleman was very much 
pestered with a horde of rats about his premises. The 
barn and dairy suffered most alarmingly from their depreda- 
tions. Lately, however, he got a young fox, and shut it 
lip in the barn for a few days ; when the rats, disliking 
the stranger's company, removed in a body, and pitched 
their camp in the dairy. Of course, the gentleman was 
equally anxious to start them from among his butter and 
cheese ; so he chained master Reynard at the end of the 
building, when the rats took huff, and emigrated from the 
place altogether. 
