COMMUNICATION OF FACTS BY RATS.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1128, 21 December 1883, Page 3

COMMUNICATION OF FACTS BY RATS.

The other day (says a writer in Chambers' Journal), as I was strolling along the brookside taking a <jniet afternoon constitutional, I noticed a dead dog in the middle of the brook, the water running down at the time not being nearly snfficUnt to cover it. There is-nothing so nnnsuah in the sight of a half-polrid carchss in either brook or pond as of itself to attract attention ; sol snppose it must have been some motion in the mass that unconsciously struck the eye. At any rate, while I was looking an old rat left the rotting carcass and made off down the watercourse at a rapid rate, looking neither to right nor left. He seemed so (horongbly on business that I determined to upset the bid fellow’s arrangement,, and sec whither it would lend. Accordingly, I cut off a booked thorn-sticky made my way from stone to stone to the dead dog, hanled him up high and dry on to the bank under a bnsb, and wailed. Scarcely was all still again when the old rat returned, and in bis train came 24 more rats straight to the spot where the dog had been. Had I known the consequences it had been there still, for no sooner did the poor

old fellow find : the ~ treasure-trove gone than he set np a most piteous scream, and darted up the brook like an arrow. Yain bis flight; within 20 yards the ’ infuriated victims of the seeming deception had overtaken, slain, and eaten up the cruel deceiver. Undoubtedly he had told them of the magnificent feast awaiting them, and proffered to lead them to where it was.