The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1875-01-29

down numbers of them Jack made rat
pie, baked it, and liked it. At the siege
of Malta, the French garrison, when fam
ished, offered as much rs II dollar head
for rats, or two dollars if barn-fed. Dur
ing the siege of Paris, in the late Fran
co-German war, many tasted rat who had
never tasted it before.
The fecundity of the brown rat is pro-
digious, and it has been calculated that if
Mr.. and Mrs. Rat live three years after
their first child is born, and If all the
children, children's children, children's
childrens children, etc, survive, the
family mt the end of three years would
comprise six hundred thousand mouths.
As rat is credited with eating one
tenth as much as an average man, this
interesting family would consume as
much rs an army OF sixty thousand
men.
Unquestionably, whatever may be the
degree of fecundity and voracity, rats
are generally great nuisance, and re-
quire to be lessened in number, if not
extirpated. Let us notice some of the
varieties in which the nuisance presents
itself, and the mode of procedure conse-
quently adopted
Rats greatly infest ships, and are by
them carried to every part of the world.
So industriously do they make homes for
themselves in the numerous crannies and
corners in the hull of ship, that it is
almost impossible to get rid of them.
Ships take out rats as well as passengers
and cargo every voyage whether the
former remain i'll the ship when in port
! is best known to themselves. When the
East India Company had ships of their
own, they employed rat-catcher, who
sometimes captured five hundred rats in
one ship just returned from Calcutta.
| The ship-rat is often the black species.
/ Sometimes black and brown inhabit the
same vessel and unless they carry on
perpetual hostilities, the one party will
keep to the head of the vessel and the
other to the stern. The ship-rat is very
anxious that his supply of fresh water
shall not fail he will come on deck whSh
it rains, and climb up the wet sails to
suck them. Sometimes he mistakes n
spirit cask for n water cask and gets
drunk. A captain of an American
merchant ship is credited Tor discredited)
with an ingenious bit of sharp practice
as means of clearing his ship from rats.
Having discharged cargo at port III
Holland, he found his ship in juxtaposi-
ton to another which had just taken in a
cargo of Dutch cheeses. He laid a
plank at night from one vessel to the
other the rats, tempted by the odor,
trooped along the plank, and began their
feast He took care that the plank
should not be there to serve them as a
pathway back again and so the cheese
laden ship had cruel addition to its
outward cargo.
Some years ago the rats wrought such
execution at the Geological Gardens, in
the Regents Park, that it became neces-
sary to surround the duck-ponds with a
wire net fencing. Other parts of the
garden were similarly infested, the rats
being attracted by the large quantity
and variety of food stored there every
day. Soon after the construction of the
new monkey-house, they ate through the
floor, whereupon the floor was filled in
with concrete, and the open roof was
ceiled but they quickly made their way
through the plaster of the latter, deter
mined If possible to get ut the monkeys
bread. They also got into the den of
the rhinoceros The cunning rogues
were sometimes seen in the evening
swimming across the Regents canal, to
spend a night i'll feasting in the gardens,
and returned ut morn TO a secure retreat
during the daytime. 1t became neces-
sary to hunt them with terriers, and then
their carcasscs were thrown as dainty bits
/ to the eagles and vultures.
Parent Duchatelet gives graphic ac-
count of the prodigious colony of rats in
the abattoirs of Montfaucon, near Paris.
can old proprietor of one of the
slaughter-houses had a certain space of
ground entirely surrounded by walls,
with holes only large enough for the in
/ gress and egress of rats. Within this
enclosure he left the carcasses of two
or three horses. The rats swarmed in
thickly to partake of the feast. He
caused the holes to be quietly stopped
up, and entered the inclosure, with
thick stick i'll one hand, and
lighted torch in the other. They
were 80 congregrated that blow with
stick anywhere did execution. Before he
/ left the enclosure, he had killed more
than two thousand six hundred.
Some years ago (perhaps recent
alterations have changed the state
ofaffairs) the Paris sewers formed
an extensive hunting ground for
the men who captured rats alive,
to sell to the rat-killing sporting
fraternity. Several men, working in a
party, formed plan as to the spot
towards which the animals should be
driven. Each man carried lighted candle,
with tin reflector, bag, sieve, and u
spade. The moment the rats saw light,
they ran away along the sides of the
sewer the men followed, came up to
them, seized them behind the ears and
bagged them. When driven to bay from
different directions into one spot, they
sometimes turned upon their pursuers
with desperate fierceness but the latter
were always masters of the situation in
the long run. AS to London, the excel
lent brickwork of the new main drainage
sewers probably defies the rats but they
still continue their ramblings from
sewers through house drains into the
easements of old tenements.
Rat-catchers and rat-catching have
been written about more unanimously
than most persons would think. The
royal rat-catcher, in the time of George