The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-10 00:00:00

COMBAT BETWEEN A RAT AND

A FERRET.

A striking proof of the sagacity. courage, and I
may say reasoning powers of these animals, has been
recently given me by a medical friend living at King-
ton. Being greatly surprised that the ferret, an animal
of such slow locomotive powers, should be so destruc-
tive to the rat tribe, ho determined to bring both
these animals fairly into the arena, in order to
judge of their respective powers; and having selected a
fine large and full-grown male rat, and also an equally
strong buck ferret, which had been accustomed to the
haunts of rats, my friend, accompanied by his son,
turned these two animals loose in a room without furni-
ture, in which there was but one window, and the two
philosophers determined to watch patiently the whole
process of the encounter. Immediately upon being
liberated, the rat ran round the room, as if searching for
an exit. Not finding any means of escape, he uttered a
piercing shriek, and with the most prompt decision took
up his station directly under the light, thus f,aining over
his adversary (to use the language of other duelist!)
"the advantage of the sun." The ferret now erected his
head, sniffed about, and seemed fearlessly to push his
way towards the spot where the scent of his game was
strongest, facing the light in full front, and preparing
himself with avidity to seize upon his prey. No sooner,
however, had he approached within two feet of his watch-
ful foe, than the rat, again uttering a loud cry, rushed
at him with iviolence, and inflicted a severe wound on
the head or neck, which was soon shown by the
blood which flowed from it; the ferret seemed astonished
at the attack, and retreated with evident discomfiture ;
while the rat, instead of following up the advantage he
had gained, instantly withdrew to his form, r station
under the window. The ferret soon recovered the shock
be had sustained, and erecting his head, one-. more took
the told. This second rencon.re was in all its progres,
and results an exact repetition of the former, with
this exception, that on the rush of the rat to the
conflict, the ferret appeared more collected, and evi-
dently showed an inclination to get a firm hold of his
enemy; the strength of the rat, however, was very great,
and he again succeeded, not only in avoiding the deadly
embrace of the ferret, but also in inflicting another
severe wound on his neck and head. The rat, a second
time, returned to his retreat under the window, and the
ferret seemed less anxious to renew the conflict. Thee
attacks were resumed at intervals for nearly two hours,
all ending in the failure of the ferret, who was evi-
dently fighting to a disadvantage from the light falling
full on his eye whenever he approached the rat, who
wisely kept his ground, and never fbr a moment lost
sight of the advantage he had obtained. In order to
prove whether the choice of this position depended
upon accident, my friend managed to dislodge the rat,
and took his own station under the window ; but the
moment the ferret attempted to make his approach, the
rat, evidently aware of the advantage ho had lost, en-
deavoured to creep between my friends legs, thus losing
his natural fear of man under the danger which awaited
him from a more deadly foe. The ferret by this time
had learned a profitable lesson, and prepared to approach
the rat in a more wily manner, by creeping insidiously
along the skirting, and thus avoiding the glare of light
that hitherto had baffled his attempt. The rat still
pursued with unabated energy his original mode of
attack,. namely, inflicting a wound and avoiding, at the
same tpse, a close combat ; while it was equally certain
that his foe was intent upon laying hold of; and grasp-
ing his intended victim in his murderous embrace.
The character of the fight, which had lasted more than
three hours, was now evidently changed, and the rat
appeared conscious that he had lost the advantage he
originally possessed, and, like the Swedish hero, had
taught his frequently-beaten foe to conquer in his turn.
is
shriek,
hnha
ert ;rae effort s r9istul rlciroosefahnisdncegi
resistance,er surrendered
foi
srhi
At last, in a lengthened struggle, the ferret succeeded
he
originally-intended
life to certain
streunpicnie:rdsme vagedrreaipnl pigtltelfe;o foe.--
Jesse's tu.
but, sending forth a plaintive
Jesse's Natural History.

THE PEST or MICE.—The damage done by mice
s
year
destroying ii immense, mae nse,
great a mnouumn tbienrg,
almost. to a plague. A neighbour of mine hit upon an
egwei noxrhrepinacetdhi then.qie
into
iwnoatant
sht cornieat
hrt stacks
autumn t this so
of
were in the fields, rtfiheewheat
unmSdoncwairlinregy,i
employed
ept hl foundoe3, seede
atal
man with a water-cart and watering-pot to go over his
fields, and pour water into every hole he could find, and
in a few days he killed about twenty dozen. The quan-
tity these would have bred is incalculable ; the result
was his stacks were but little injured compared with ad-
joining farms."—Agricultural Gazette.
DREADFUL ACCIDENT.--On Thursday afternoon
last, a dreadful accident happened at the Partnewynidd
forge by the bursting of a boiler. The scene was really ter-
rific; one large piece of iron passed through the roof of the
forge, carrying everything before it, and several stones and
bricks dropped on the roof of the houses near ; and. the win-
win-
dows were all broken. There were altogether fifteen per-
sons scalded
czve_gcrefa
and otherwise t 44 of whvm are A9W
under

COURT OF ALDERMEN.
On Tueiday a court was held for th, dispatch of hnii-
ness. It was mentioned in the paper of tusiness tt at
judgment would be given on the petition of Hr. S,e2' en
Stuart Curtis, complaining of the conduct, of 2,1 e, 16.
Goad and brokers.

THE DEPLORABLE STATE OF TIE.: GILTS,ITR-STREET

PRISON.

The SHERIFFS having made their report on the state
of the City prisons,
Alderman WILSON rose and said he bad received a
letter from the Town-clerk, written by the direction of
the Committee of the whole Court, requesting his imme-
diate attention, as visiting magistrate, to the disorderly
conduct of the prisoners confined in Giltspur street
Compter. He begged to remark upon that communi-
cation that he had not been inattentive to his duties, but
that he had long been fully and fearfuly alive to the
dreadful :state of disorder which prevailed in that gaol,
and he begged to say that he by no means deserved the
imposition of the personal responsibility now thrown
upon him; but ha would call upon the Court for its joint
assistance.—(Hear, ar.) He bad been occupied al-
most daily in endeavouring to restrain the prisoners
from the perpetration of acts of violence, and, not-
withstanding all his efforts, the greatest dangers were
to be apprehended to the public peace, in consequence
of the ex;sting insubordination. It was in vain
that he addressed them in the language of expos-
tulation and menace. One of the ringleaders in the
disorders in a very short time demolished sixty-
nine panes of glass ; others followed the example in
that description of outrage, whilst others committed
violent assaults upon their fellow-prisoners. The
removal to separate cells produced no abatement of the
noise and disposition to violence amongst the abandoned
inmates. They threatened the governor, assaulted the
turnkeys, and pulled to pieces their beds, and every other
kind of furniture they could lay their hands upon, and he
had at last been compelled to put in force the Act of Par-
liament authorising the infliction of corporal punishment,
an extremity to which he had never before resorted, to
bring the principal offenders to a sense of their duty
and of common decency. The whole of the gross mis-
conduct he had faintly described arose, he must say,
from the want of the means of accomplishing classifica-
tion, from the want of a sufficient number of cells for the
separation of the unmanageable from the well-disposed,
and the impossibility in a place so overcrowded with
human beings to make any practical arrangement for the
observance of order. He had been endeavouring for the
last seven years to cause the erection of a new gaol, and
although some progress had been made towards the
attainment of that great object, he apprehended that
it was still almost confined to the imagination. If the
important question happened to meet with the mea-
sure of procrastination to which other important
matters bad been subjected, Government or Parlia-
ment would, he hoped, effectually interfere. He was
determined to press the necessity of such interference
in order to prevent the serious mischiefs which every one
who witnessed, as he had witnessed, what constantly
occurred in the Compter could not help anticipating.
It would be desirable to be informed by Sheriff Challis,
who was the chairman of the Building Committee, what
was the cause of the delay, and what difficulties pre-
sented themselves in the prosecution of the labours of
that committee.

Alderman and Sheriff CHALLIS said the reports which
he and his brother Sheriff presented differed in nothing
from the reports usually handed to the Court of Alder-
men, and the books of ihe visiting magistrates contained
all the details of the daily occurrences eithuuintermitted
regularity, and were produced before the committee
every Saturday. He admitted that great evils arose
from the want of the means of classifying the prisoners
in the Compter. In the absence of those means the ne-
cessary discipline could not be orgainz d, but the magis-
trates were doing all they cluof do to improve the
prison as far as was compatible with its size and existing
capabilities. They had appointed a sub committee, who
had embodied a system of rules for its regulation
and manaeement, and that system only required the
sanction of the Secretary of State to be carried into
effect, and he hal determined to raise the salaries of
those who had the supecintendence of the inmates, so
that a better class of men would be engaged in the per-
formance of the duiies. As regarded the new gaol, no
time had been at all lost. The committee constantly as-
sembled for the purpose of carrying out the ietentions of
the Court, impressed with the urgent nature of the ne-
cessity.—( Hear, hear.)
Alderman FAREBROTHER said that if the Compter
was so much crowded with prisoners, it would be very
easy to transfer a great portion of that crowd to New-
gate, in which prison, from the nature of toe arrange-
ments there, sufficient room could be supplied to effect
classification to a certain extent. He certainly could
not see that the least blame was attributable to the
magistrates, or that they were chargeable with having,
in the remotest degree, caused delay in the erection of
the new prison.

Sir PETER LAURIE deprecated the discussion of such
a question under the present circumstances, but he
hoped that the documentary matter on the subject of
transportation, published by order of the House of Lords,
would be speedily brought down to the court.
The RECORDER staid he could state to a certainty that
the opinions of the English, Irish, and Scotch judges were
unanimously in favour of retaining transportation as a
punishment.—(Rear, hear.)
Alderman SIDNEY strongly condemned the still exist-
ing abomination of Giltspur street Prison, the dreadful
state of which was the cause of the transportation of
such masses of the people. He was convinced that if the
means of classification were not adopted, and the magis-
tracy did not show more activity in carrying out the
great object of those who meant well to the community,
Government must take the whole business into their own
hands, and erect a building adapted to the exigencies of
the time.