The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-07-10
From the London Globe.

From the London Globe.
 It is singular to reflect on what slight evidence mankind has accepted the exist ence of the rat. Much has been heard quite recently of a plague of rats at Braintree. Houses we were given to un- derstand, were overrun, women were scared into mysteries, cats were put to rout by whiskered battalions. T turned round" saith one deponent, ''and there was a great rat. with hair as long as cats, trying to get down hole with a half-pound lump of bacon" curl ous fact in connection with the affair ordinary rat is brown; the ordinary mouse and all women in a state of nervous ap- prehension. All the rats they had seen were of prodgious size, but personally they had captured none.
 To the scientific mind all this is very unsatisfactory. What, indeed, is the evil dence that such a creature as a rat exists at all-that the terror of Braintree is any thing but a mouse as it appears to the exaggerated vision of a hysterical wom- ar? It will be granted that in practical ly every case, the glimpse of the enemy is for the briefest period of time. Even at Braintree where rats should have gained courage from numbers, they do not sit to have their photographs taken. All that the spectator sees is a flash of two black eyes and 9 tail-about as much as the agitated angler sees of the trout which he fails to land. The circumstances are not conductive to accurate obSerVa- tion. The four-ounce trout easily be- comes a half -pounder; the wee, covering, timorous beastie lives in the memory as a savage monster, slaghterer of pa- bies, and a marauder of bacon by the haf-pound
 It is, at the least, suspicious that the twin foes of domestic peace-the mouse and the rat-shouId be so similar in form, appearance, and habit. Even by those dogmatic zoologists who think they have established the differentiation of the species, it will be admitted that, to the unscientific eye, the rat is but the mouse magnified by three or four diameters. The ordinary rat is grown; the ordinary mouse is brown The rat has whiskers; so has the mouse. Abnormal length of tail is charactistic of both animals. The eyes of boz. mouse and rat, to careful ob- server, appear equally bright, small, and piercing. The movements in either case are hurried and precipitate, and there is
 
 running up a perpendicular surface. The squeak of the rat is not very different from the squeal of the mouse. There are occasionally white mice. just as there are albino rats What, indeed, is there that a mouse can do which a rat cannot? What idosyncrasy of appearance or behaviour appeartains to the one that does not also appertain to the other? Surely it is diff ficult for the unpreiudced mind to study the records of Brantree of Hamelin with out arriving at the conclusion that the rat is, as it were, but the mouse writ large The conjecture is that the eye of the distracted female has a certain magnifying faculty.
 It will be said that the feminine fancy, no matter how excited, does not evolve tiger from a cat. That is true. but there has to be taken into account the predis- position on the part of the woman to put the worst construction on the ac- tions of a mouse. The enmity which was predicted in Eden between the woman and the serpent is undeniably true be- tween the woman and the mouse. Into the cause of this antipathy it is not to the present purpose to inquire; the fact remains that the agitation produced in the feminine bosom by the most 'ridicu- Jus mus" is out of all proportion to it's physical proportions. It may even be suggested that the great rat theory is one knowingly put forward by womankind by way of affording a plausible excuse for her palpitations. Why" says the mere man, ''be afraid of a mouse? It cannot eat you; it will not even bite you" And, in sheer self-defense. the cornered sex elaborates this fiction of a greater and fiercer mouse. a mouse that glares at you from corners; a mouse with a tail as babies in their cradles and would, no doubt, attack you if you did not get on chair and scream. A mouse too, which. for greater plausibilty, keeps be- hind wainscots and runs in and out of holes just like ordinary mice. and plum ders the same larders with large appe- tite. Such portent is not to be laushed