148 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
surmulot, or the brown Norway rat, has signalized its appearance 
in New Zealand by the destruction of the night parroquet. At the 
Antilles it has destroyed the diablotin; these birds burrowed in 
the ground like the tadorne, or duck of the Alps. 
The establishment of the Muscovite or Tartar rat in France com- 
menced by the extermination of the Norman rat, conformably with 
the traditions of the species. 
There is mortal antipathy between the Norman blood and the 
Muscovite blood. The brown rat which formerly covered the 
French territory with numberless colonies, now no longer exists in 
Paris save in the cabinet of natural history. Scarcely have some 
relics of the race escaped the tooth of the conqueror by swimming 
to small islands of the inhospitable coast of Brittany, the country 
of the Venetes. Thus of old was Venice of the Adriatic founded 
by the wreck of cisalpine populations escaped from the sword of 
Attila, who found an asylum in its lagunes. 
The extermination of the Norman rat by the Moscovite rat in 
France is cotemporary with the annihilation of the privileges of 
the aristocracy and the advent of the order of the sabre. The 
power of destruction with which the Tartar rat is armed — its 
frightful voracity — its unconquerable courage, completely recall 
the manners of the fierce horsemen of Attila and of Timour Lenk, 
those pitiless exterminators who amused themselves with building 
living pyramids, in which men served for stones, and who would 
not have the grass to grow on the spot where their horses had 
trodden. 
The Russian rat devours the dog, the cat, and attacks the child 
asleep. The corpse of man is a dainty for it. It begins by eat- 
ing out the eyes ; its tooth is most venomous. I know ten cases 
of amputation of the leg necessitated by the bite of the rat of the 
sewers. 
The number of them nourished at the slaughter-houses and 
sewers of Paris is beyond conception. From twenty to thirty thou- 
sand have been killed day after day at Montfaucon without appa- 
rently lessening their numbers. It is calculated that an annual 
tribute of 12,776,250 pounds of meat is served to them annually 
— of horse-flesh and of other putrefied animal matters. 
