212 
Vermin of the Farm. 
boards, tiles, or slates placed, as it were accidentally, against the 
walls, under which they will pass, when small gins underneath 
will be fatal. The strongly made gins usually employed are far 
too large and clumsy to be set in narrow runs. To be of the 
right size they should weigh about four ounces, and measure as 
follows ; entire length 7-^ in., gape of the jaws, when open, 2^ 
in., their length 2 in. The cost from 4d. to 6d. each. These are 
small enough to catch a mouse and strong enough to hold a polecat. 
If poison ‘ be preferred on the score of humanity, the following 
recipe, recommended by Waterton, will be found efficacious : — 
Take a quantity of oatmeal that would fill a common-sized washhand 
basin : add to this 21b. of coarse brown sugar and one dessert-spoonful of 
arsenic. Mix these ingredients very well together, and then put the com- 
position into an earthen jar. From time to time place a table-spoonful of 
this iu the runs which the rats frequent, taking care that it is out of the 
reach of innocuous animals. The rats will partake of it freely, and it will soon 
put an end to all their depredations. 
When a rat kills a pigeon, or chicken, it rarely eats more than 
a portion, and it is easy to poison the portion remaining and so 
secure the rat on his return for a second meal. If poisoned with 
arsenic, or any other irritating poison, it is as well to put shallow 
vessels of water within reach ; for the rats, consumed with thirst, 
will come to drink at them and die there instead of in their holes, 
where their decomposing bodies would subsequently create a 
stench. 
Should a rat perchance die behind the wainscot, or under 
the floor of a room, where from the difficulty of ascertaning its 
exact position it cannot well be removed, and where in warm 
weather it would become very unpleasant, it is a good plan to 
catch a few bluebottle flies, and, closing door and window, turn 
them loose in the room. In a short time they will settle down 
above the spot where the rat is lying, and the latter may then 
be removed with the least possible trouble. 
Mr. T. A. Abbott, writing from Sussex in The Field of 
October 3, 1891, has suggested a method by which he thinks 
corn — standing in stacks in the fields and elsewhere — can be 
efficiently protected from rats, and when com has been carted 
and stacked in such condition that it cannot be profitably 
threshed and marketed till the following spring, its protection 
becomes a matter of more than ordinary importance ; — 
“ Around our vfheat stacks,” he says, “ we have placed corrugated iron, 
set on end and lapped. The sheets are the ordinary 6ft. by 2ft. quality, cut 
in halves, making two 3ft. lengths. These small sheets are let into the 
* In vol. ill. 1st series, p. 428 of the Journal, there is a paper by J. S. Carr 
on ‘ Kats and Mice, and Mode of their Destruction.’ A preparation of phos- 
phorus is recotwnended — now the common phosphorus paste of commerce. — E d, 
