Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
always been very plentiful hereabouts, and until now I have 
never discovered what use they are. But now I learn their 
presence indicates sound healthy surroundings : that there 
have been well-authenticated cases where the rats have 
been seen to decamp in a body just prior to an outbreak of 
typhoid fever in the place they left. So we may look 
upon them as a sort of sanitary inspectors. Rats and 
nettles seem somehow always to go together. I heard the 
other day of a delightful tale of some fellow who is going 
about the countryside professing to charm rats away from 
any dwelling-house, but — there is always a “ but — report 
also says that this modern Pied Piper of Hamelin always 
leaves a few behind ! If we continue to be so pestered 
with them as we are at present, I think I will try the 
Leopard’s-bane on them. If it professes to kill a Libbard, 
methinks it will surely dispose of a rat. Briza Media 
grass, called here “ Peeseweep grass,” is known as Trembling 
Jockeys in Yorkshire, and there is a saying 
A tremling Jock i’ the house 
An ye weeant hev a mouse, 
but I don’t know if this applies to a rat. I am afraid it can 
scarcely be potent enough, as I have had bunches of it in 
the house often. Dried and hung up, it is supposed to 
keep off ague. Rats are excessively cunning, and it is very 
difficult to get quit of them. They are my despair in the 
garden and greenhouse. One year they ate a whole set of 
choice bulbs, and they riddle the rockeries with holes, and 
are afraid of nothing and nobody, actually getting into the 
pig’s-trough and eating up the food before poor Chig’s very 
eyes ! By-the-way, I find we cannot keep any but white 
pigs ; there is no sale for black pigs, they are considered so 
unlucky ! I am rather sorry, black pigs are so much 
prettier. I remember the dearest little black pigs about 
the farms in Devonshire scurrying in and out of the Apple- 
orchards. Boy showed me a Waterhen’s nest, scarcely 
more than a depression in the ground among the dry 
leaves. Down by the river there is a Thrush’s nest in a 
*56 
