212 
THE RAT. 
that it did accompany the House of Hanover in its 
emigration from Germany to England. Be this as 
it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has now- 
punished us severely for more than a century and a 
quarter. Its rapacity knows no bounds, while its 
increase is prodigious beyond all belief. But the 
most singular part of its history is, that it has nearly 
worried every individual of the original rat of Great 
Britain. So scarce have these last-mentioned ani- 
mals become, that in all my life I have never seen 
but one single solitary specimen; it was sent, some 
few years ago, to Nostell Priory, in a cage, from 
Bristol; and I received an invitation from Mr. 
Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit there, to go 
and see it. Whilst I was looking at the little native 
prisoner in its cage, I could not help exclaiming, 
— Poor injured Briton ! hard, indeed, has been ' 
the fate of thy family ! in another generation at 
farthest, it will probably sink down to the dust for 
ever ! 
Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress 
of the stranger rat through England's wide domain, 
as the old people now alive can tell nothing of 
its coming amongst them. No part of the country 
is free from its baneful presence : the fold and the 
field, the street and the stable, the ground and the 
garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity 
and to its forbidding habits. After dining on 
carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage 
to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where, 
like Celaeno of old, " vestigia fceda relinquit." We 
may now consider it saddled upon us for ever 
