ALL ABOUT RATS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2647, 29 June 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

ALL ABOUT RATS.

The bliick and brown rats are particularly deserving of notice, and are the most widely distributed over the world. It is not known where or how they were introduced into Europe first, but it must have been in recent times, as the aneienfs did not know them. They both appear to be natives of the central part of Asia. The brown rat found its way to Europe, in the beginning of the 18th century, and reached Britain and the western countries of Europe about the middle of that epoch. The Jacobites of Britain had the notion that they came with the House of Hanover, as they appeared about that time and therefore chose to call them tl e Hanoverian rat. They are sometimes eironeously called the Norway rat. The brown rat is larger and more powerful thau the black rat, and they are deadly foes. The brown rat has succeeded in causing an almost total disappearance of the black rat in places whore it was very numerous. According to Mr Kodowell's theory, the maimer in which the brown rat has sup planted its black foe is by love instead of war. The browns being the stionger, carry off the females of the blacks by force, and thus he accounts for the curious kind of parti-coloured offsprings which may be found in Fiance. Tht-x; rats infest ships, and so are carried to the most distant parts of the worlrl, fomc of them getting ashore at every port and establishing new colonies. The bl ick rat is nearly seven inches long, aud the bio vn rat grows to be ten inches, with a tail eight inches long. Both species me extremely prolific, producing from 10 to 14 at a birth. When they are pressed by hunger they do not hesitate to devour the weaker of their kind. The rat's neverfailing appetite is especially useful in devouring animal and the vegetable substances, the putrefaction of which would otherwise bo productive of pestilence. It is said that the visits of the plague t'> Western Europe and Britain have ceased from the time when rats became plentiful. Their sense of smell is very acute so rim :h so that rat catchers are very careful ti> glove their hands when setting their trap* The professional rat catcher in Enyluud wears a brass image of a rat as a sign of his business. The ways and means of catching tbem are a professional secret. They procure them alive and sell them to ratpit keepers. These pit keepers have a sort of hole where they let the rats loo<n nnd dogs are set on them. Crowds of boys and men pay to see this cruel t-port. The skin of rats is made into gloves in Paris and in Siberia there is a field mouse that stores up such quantities of driul roots and other food to last through tho long winter of that country 'that halfstarred people there hunt their nests and carry off most of the fool for their own usj. A troop of trained rats wtrj exhibited a short time ago, dressed like men and wi>men.» They walked on their hiud legs and went through a sort of plav, one !C, of which was to liaug a cat and dame around the body.