ROUGH ON RATS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 209, 28 April 1932, Page 2

ROUGH ON RATS

WORLD CO'NFERENCE FOR ELIMINATION OF PEST. SYDNEY. The rats in Melbourne that ate the orehestral score of "Carmen" and thereby caused a postponement of the opera performance in Sydney, had better be careful. Recently in Paris an International Rat Congress was held. Fifty-two nations were represented. The indiscriminating spraying of arsenic was condemned, for this poison causes a high death-rate among other animals. Phar Lap's death is an instanee. Successful experiments have been made with materials filled with bacilli, which carry deadly and infectious rat diseases. The common house rat has a merciless enemy in the wander or vagahond rat, which lives in the open, on farms, and boards vessels in port. These vagabonds are ravenous, and, at a pinch, don't hesitate to eat each other. World- wide trade has distrbuted them in every country, where they follow railro'ads into the interiors. Natives of Persia and India, these rats were first known in Europe in 1727, when they crossed the- Yolga River at Astrakhan. The Congress in Paris reeommended international co-operation in the war upon rats — notorious cdrriers of disease, quite apart from their destructive capacities.