THE MAGAZINE

OF

NATURAL HISTORY.

JANUARY, 1836.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ART. I. Notes on the History and Habits of the Brown, or Grey, Rat (Mús decumànus). By CHARLES WATERTON, Esq.

SOME few years after the fatal period of 1688, when our aristocracy, in defence of its ill-gotten goods, took upon itself to dispose of hereditary monarchy in a way which, if attempted nowadays, would cause a considerable rise in the price of hemp, there arrived on the coast of England a ship from Germany, freighted with a cargo of no ordinary importance. In it was a sovereign remedy for all manner of national grievances. Royal expenditure was to be mere moonshine, taxation as light as Camilla's footsteps, and the soul of man was to fly up to heaven its own way. But the poet says,

Ante obitum nemo, supremaque funera debet;"

that is, we must not expect supreme happiness on our side of the grave. As a counterpoise to the promised felicity to be derived from this superexcellent German cargo, there was introduced, either by accident or by design, an article destined at no far distant period to put the sons of Mr. Bull in mind of the verses which I have just quoted.

This was no other than a little grey-coloured short-legged animal, too insignificant, at the time that the cargo was landed, to attract the slightest notice. It is known to naturalists sometimes by the name of the Norwegian, sometimes by that of the Hanoverian, rat. Though I am not aware that there are any minutes, in the zoological archives of this country, which point out to us the precise time at which this insatiate and mischievous little brute first appeared among us; still, there is a tradition current in this part of the country, that it actually came over in the same ship which conveyed the new

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dynasty to these shores. My father, who was of the first order of field naturalists, was always positive on this point; and he maintained firmly that it did accompany the House of Hanover in its emigration from Germany to England. Be this as it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has now punished us severely for more than a century and a quarter. Its rapacity knows no bounds, while its increase is prodigious beyond all belief. But the most singular part of its history is, that it has nearly worried every individual of the original rat of Great Britain. So scarce have these last-mentioned animals become, that in all my life I have never seen but one single solitary specimen: it was sent, some few years ago, to Nostell Priory, in a cage, from Bristol; and I received an invitation from Mr. Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit there, to go and see it. Whilst I was looking at the little native prisoner in its cage, I could not help exclaiming, "Poor injured Briton! hard, indeed, has been the fate of thy family in another generation, at farthest, it will probably sink down to the dust for ever!"

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Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress of the stranger rat through England's wide domain, as the old people now alive can tell nothing of its coming amongst them. No part of the country is free from its baneful presence: the fold and the field, the street and the stable, the ground and the garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity and to its forbidding habits. After dining on carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where, like Celano of old, "vestigia foeda relinquit." We may now consider it saddled upon us for ever. Hercules himself, could he return to earth, would have his hands full, were he to attempt to drive this harpy back again to Stymphalus. It were loss of time to dwell on its fecundity. Let any body trace its movements in the cellar, the dairy, the outhouse, and the barn, and he will be able to form some notion of the number of hungry mouths which we have to fill. Nine or ten young ones at a time, twice or thrice during the year, are an enormous increase, and must naturally recall to our minds one of the many plagues which formerly desolated the fertile land of Egypt. In the summer months it will take off to the fields, and rear its young amongst the weeds which grow in the hedgerows; plundering, for their support, the birds' nests with a ferocity scarcely conceivable in so small an animal.

Man has invented various instruments for its destruction; and what with these, and with poison, added to the occasional assistance which he receives from his auxiliaries, the cat, the

dog, the owl, the weasel, the ferret, and the foumart, he is enabled, in some degree, to thin its numbers, and to check its depredations.

There are some localities, however, from which it may be effectually ousted, provided you go the right way to work. My own house, than which none in Great Britain can have suffered more from the plundering propensities of the Hanoverian rats, is now completely free from their unwelcome presence. On my return to it in 1813, they absolutely seemed to consider it their own property. They had gnawed through thirty-two doors; and many of the oaken window frames were irreparably injured by them. While I was in Guiana, a Dutch lady named Vandenheuvil had given me a young tiger-cat, which one of her negroes had taken that day in a coffee field. It was the marjay, which, by the by, Buffon considers untamable. I raised it with great care; and it grew so fond of me, that it would follow my steps like a dog. Nothing could surpass the dexterity with which this little feline favourite destroyed the rats on our reaching home. Towards the close of day it would ascend the staircase; and no sooner did a rat make its appearance from the casements, than it would spring at it with the velocity of an arrow, and never fail to seize it. In 1828, having got, by long experience, a tolerably good insight into the habits of this tormenting quadruped, and having found that it spoiled or pilfered every thing within its reach, I finally resolved that it should look out for another place of residence. Wherefore I carefully searched for all its various entrance holes. These I effectually closed with stone and mortar. I then filled up all useless sewers, and paid great attention to the paving and renewing of those which were absolutely required; fixing, at the same time, in either end of them a cast-iron grate movable at pleasure. The bottoms of all the outer doors were done with hoop iron; and the pavement which goes round the house was relaid with particular care. By these precautions I barred all access to these greedy intruders; and, as no rubbish or lumber is now allowed to remain in the different nooks and crannies commonly found near ancient dwellings, there is no place of shelter left to conceal any stray individual whose bowels may chance to yearn for one more repast on cheese or bacon. In the meantime, the cat and the owl meet with no obstructions, while prowling for those which may still linger in the environs. The mice, too, seem to have taken the alarm. In a word, not a single mouse or rat is to be found in any part of the house, from the cellars to the attic stories.

In case it were not convenient or practicable to adopt similar precautions to those already enumerated, I would suggest what follows: Take a quantity of oatmeal that would fill a common-sized wash-hand basin; add to this two pounds of coarse brown sugar, and one dessert spoonful of arsenic. Mix these ingredients very well together, and then put the composition into an earthen jar. From time to time place a table-spoonful of this in the runs which the rats frequent, taking care that it is out of the reach of innocuous animals. They will partake of it freely; and it will soon put an end to all their depredations.

Rats are fond of frequenting places where there are good doings; while their natural sagacity teaches them to retire in time from a falling house. This knack at taking care of self seems common both to man and brute. Hence the poet :

"Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos;
Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris."

When Fortune smiles, thy friends are many;
But, if she frowns, thou hast not any.

Whilst the rats had all their own way here, they annoyed me beyond measure; and many a time have I wished the ship at Jericho, which first brought their ancestors to these shores. They had formed a run behind the plinth in my favourite sitting-room, and their clatter was unceasing. Having caught one of them in a box trap, I dipped its hinder parts into warm tar, and then turned it loose behind the hollow plinth. The others, seeing it in this condition, and smelling the tar all along the run through which it had gone, thought it most prudent to take themselves off; and thus, for some months after this experiment, I could sit and read in peace, free from the hated noise of rats. On removing the plinth at a subsequent period, we found that they had actually gnawed away the corner of a peculiarly hard-burnt brick, which had obstructed their thoroughfare.

The grey rats are said to destroy each other, in places where they become too numerous for their food; but, bad as they are, I will not add this to the catalogue of their misdemeanours. They can never be in such want of aliment as to do this; because instinct would teach them that where there is ingress to a place, there is also egress from it; and thus, when they began to be pinched for food, they would take off in a body, or disperse amongst the fields, and live upon the tender bark of trees, and upon birds, beetles, and other things which the adjacent ground would afford.

That they move from place to place, in large bodies, cannot