206 
Vermin of the Farm, 
wliicli they receive, and which stand in need of protection, is 
a difficult question, and one which can only be answered after a 
careful study of the creatures’ habits, and close inquiry into the 
nature of their food. 
For practical purposes, the vermin of the farm may be 
divided into four groups — namely (1) the graminivorous rodents ; 
(2) the insectivorous mole and the hedgehog (the shrews being 
harmless) ; (3) the carnivorous destroyer of poultry and other live 
stock ; and (4) the so-called winged vermin, which are more or 
less omnivorous in their habits. 
Amongst the species proposed to be dealt with in this con- 
nection will be found some, like the mole and hedgehog, which 
many persons are disposed to regard with favour on account of 
services rendered by them to the agriculturist, and which are 
held to counterbalance any harm they may do. These, it may 
be observed, are placed on the list of vermin tentatively, in 
order that their merits and demerits may be impartially ex- 
amined. The writer’s aim will be to state as briefly as may be, 
from personal observation, or from trustworthy evidence, the 
nature of the depredations committed by these so-called 
“ vermin,” the kind of foad upon which each chiefly subsists, 
and the best means of getting rid of those which are most 
destructive to agricultural produce and gi’owing trees. 
At the head of the first-named group should undoubtedly 
be placed the brown rat (Mas decumanus), and since this animal 
might with equal propriety be placed at the head of the third 
group, on account of its depredations among young ducks, 
chickens, eggs, &c., it may truly be regarded as the greatest of 
all farm pests. 
The brown rat, house-rat, barn-rat, Norway, or Hanoverian 
rat, as it is variously styled, is too well known in appearance 
to most people to require any particular description, and for this 
reason its portrait may be dispensed with. It is now so gene- 
rally distributed in all parts of the world, chiefly by means of 
merchant ships carrying cargoes, that it is impossible to state 
with any degree of certainty from what particular country it 
first came to us. Bell states it was doubtless brought hither by 
means of merchant vessels from some southern or south-eastern 
country ; Pennant imagines from the East Indies. It cer- 
tainly was known in Asia long before we have any account 
of its existence in any part of Europe, and its transit from the 
Asiatic borders into European Russia was well ascertained. 
The Russian naturalist, Pallas, states that it crossed the 
Volga from Central Asia in large troops in 1727, peopled 
Russia, and subsequently spread over the whole of Europe. 
