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Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1886, 19 January 1875, Page 3

An Abmy of Rats. —If bright eyes and smooth fur are points of animal beauty, a rat should not be an object. of disgust and aversion ; but when the rat appears "in his thousands" he certainly inspires the greatest possible loathing in the human breast. The notion o£ swarms qf rats running over each other to reach some helpless victim, and forming a seething mass instinct with hunger and thirst, is •ne ever present to sufferers from nightmare or students. of historical novels. These unfortunate persons should avoid Paris, for, if we may believe some statistics lately published, of the number of rats in that metropolis, the "joyous city," is a complete rat's ncsfc. 39,000 were killed last year in the Central Halles; 190,000 in the Market Halles, 120,000 in the slaughter-houses, 40,000 in the butchers' shops, 300.000 in the grocers' shops, 900,000 in the tanners' yards, 110,000 in the canals —a total of 1,790,000; to' which sum must be added about 3,000,000 rodents which allude capture, so that Paris boasts of a standing army something like 5,000,000 rats. Some idea may be formed of. the magnitude of this loathsome host from the fact that if a procession of Parisian rats running ten abreast vrere to start from Paris to Berlin, the vanguard would reach the German capital while the rearguard was issuing from the gates of the French metropolis.