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New Zealand Mail, Issue 12, 15 April 1871, Page 15

The Mig-bation of Eats eeom Paeis. — A letter from Versailles says :—" I learn from the officers commanding the outposts that on going the rounds at night they meet with troopß of rats, which being no longer able to sojourn in security in Paris, emigrate by hundreds of thousands. It is probable that the rats which wandered about Paris during the night recognised the bones of their friends, and became convinced that, on acccounfc of this enormous mortality, Paris was no longer for them h safe dwelling place. Those sages must have reported the matter to the national council, and it is probable that the councillors decided upon emigration en masse, taking into consideration, besides, that it was more honorable to die upon the field, before the the enemy's cannon, than to be taken prisoner in ignoble traps prepared by false friends. We can imagine what an eloquent proclamation will have bern published by the president of the" council on this occasion. The rats, like prudent people, have acted according to their principle of solidarity, and have shifted their quarters in a body, quitting the hearths ef an ungrateful capital, in order to seek security within the Prussian lines, and to find their more humble aud agreeable dwelling places. It is thus that our outposts are infested by the denizens of the great sewers of the Catacombs. What a subject for Victor Hugo!"