CURIOUS LETTER STEALERS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2062, 7 August 1885, Page 2

CURIOUS LETTER STEALERS.

Certain letters, relates Mr Hyde in the "Royal Mail," which ought to have reached a bookseller in a country town, If not having been received, it was concluded, after inquiry, that they had been duly delivered, but had subsequently been withdrawn from under the street-door, which was furnished with a slit to receive letters, but 'had no box to retain them. During subsequent alterations in the shop, however, when it was necessary to remove the flooring under the window, the discovery was made of'• thirty one ' letters, six post-cards, apd three news, papers, which had been carried thither by rats. The corners of the letters bearing ing the stamps, weye nibbled away, leaving no doubt that the gum upon the labels was the inducement to the theft, Several letters contained cheques and money orders, But rats are old enemies to letters, as is known in the Post Office: for, in olden times, when sailing-shins were in use as mail-packets, complaint* were made of the havoc caused by th* rats to the mails conveyed in these thips. Nor are rats the only dumb creatures who have shown a literary, turn- jn' "getting possession of' post-letters. Some years ago, a postman was going his rounds delivering letters in Kelvedon, in Essex, carrying a, registered . letter in his hand, ready to deliver it at the next house, when a tame raven—a worthy compeer, if not a contemporary, of the Jackdaw of. Rheims—suddenly darted down, snatohed it from his grasp, and flew off with it, The bewildered postman could only watch the bird while it made a circuit over the town, which it, did before alighting: and so soon as it got to a suitable place it set to work to analysg the composition of the missive by tearing tl}e letter to pieces. The fragments y;m fHortly afterwards collected and put together, when it was found that part pf them were -the remains of a cheque for £3O, which was afterwards renewed when the singular affair was made known.