Part 5
So we say positively that the rat is Chinese, and there is no record that can prove the contrary. The rats were kept locked up in that great empire of solid fences before they showed themselves to the other countries of the earth. Forty years before the great Ver and Rect battle, 750,000 big rats, with their tails out straight, like real Chinese pig-tails, concluded to make an exodus out of the heavenly territory, under the leadership of 75 big chiefs. They didn't want to leave particularly, but they were afraid of being starved out altogether, or else murdered for food by the Chinese army. After the rats had put themselves in battle array, and were duly formed in procession, the 75 big chiefs, who were distinguished from the others by their big red noses and muscular forms, held a council. At the end of a three days' session, during which a great many speeches had been made and a good deal of fighting had been going on, a very old political rat-boss arose and made a proposition. His speech was about as follows: "Honored Rats, and fellow-citizens: I have been a rat for a good many years, and don't want to change my business. I must say I like being a rat. But if we are hacked up in soup, or starved out completely, I have my doubts of our staying powers. Countrymen and lovers, this is what we are threatened with, and we must move. Where to? is the question that arises, and I have thought it over. The climate is hot to suffocation and very unhealthy here; let us trust to luck and go west, as a friend of mine said on a similar occasion. 'Go West, young man, go West,' I say unto you now, and I advise you to do so as speedily as possible." This speech was received with "tremendous applause" for the old rat waxed very eloquent, and the "go west" resolution was passed unanimously. An amendment was put in, changing the course to north-west, for the meeting was held during such hot weather, that some of the radicals wanted to start out immediately and settle on the North Pole. They were promptly overruled, of course, and the 750,000 rats, including males and females, wandered on slowly in their chosen direction, increasing on the road to a wonderful extent. The council concluded to hold a thorough count or census of rats, and each male rat, it was provided, should not be bashful about coming forward and giving the true number of his whole family--no doctoring of the returns allowed. After the count was completed, all the rats over and above the original amount, 750,000, agreed to stay in the country they had arrived at. The originals kept on moving towards the north-west, but the others filled up every section of the earth they passed through. The rats made friends with neither man nor animal on their journey. First they made a stop in a state where all the owls--although they were countrymen of the rats, having emigrated from China--fell upon them, and there was a pitched battle, the rats afterwards hiding themselves in their holes under ground after losing a great many in dead and wounded. One day they agreed to make an excursion out of the line of their route and so take in Egypt. In a few weeks they here ate up all the corn from the fields, stealing and hiding away anything edible, and quite creating a panic, but always fighting shy of the daylight. We read in the histories of a great locust plague in Egypt, about this time, but on this point we have a revelation to make. The locust was just as innocent of this crime as it is of building the Brooklyn Bridge--_it was the rats that did it_. When the rats arrived in Greece they scored a signal victory, because it was there that they extirminated a whole nation--the mice--and the former have strongly held this country ever since. We are authentically informed, by reference to our own private rat historian's notes of this trip, that the first place the rats met their great enemy, the Dog, was in Ancient Rome, where the dogs were put on them by man with much success, and here the rats could get no firm foothold. This caused them a roundabout journey north, and when they thought they had pretty well established themselves in ancient Gaul, now France, they were raided by a strange tigerish kind of animal which proved afterwards a lasting antagonist of theirs--the Cat. The poor rodents found here the other enemies they had encountered on the road, the owl and the dog, who were always urged on fiercely by man. While the rats were struggling along in France, the land was convulsed by an earthquake, causing the Atlantic river's banks to be overflowed. This submerged the land on which the rats were, and as they all could swim they headed their course for England, the nearest dry land. It was here the ferrets joined man, dogs, cats and owls, but the more the rats were hunted, the more acute and crafty they got to be, until they found out innumerable hiding-places and ways of preservation, so we have them still with us to-day. We thus close our story of research, through which we have shown America as the birthplace of the ferret, China of the rat, and England as the first country employing ferrets for rat-hunting.
FERRETS:
SURE POP BREED.
RAISED AND TRAINED
BY THE
AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK.
EVERY FERRET SOLD IS WARRANTED AS REPRESENTED.
DEPOT--92 FULTON STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
HOUSES CLEARED
--OF--
RATS
WITH FERRETS,
--BY--
CONTRACT.
DEPOT--92 FULTON STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
SURE POP
PHOSPHORIC PASTE,
FOR THE
DESTRUCTION OF
Rats, Mice, and Roaches,
MANUFACTURED BY
"SURE POP" ISAACSEN.
=PRINCIPAL DEPOT:=
92 FULTON STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
SURE POP
INSECT POWDER
FOR THE
DESTRUCTION OF
Roaches, Bed Bugs, Ants, Fleas, Flies, Mosquitoes Moths, Spiders, Scorpions, Centipedes, Plant and Animal Lice, Croton Bugs, etc., etc., etc.
_OWN IMPORTATION AND WARRANTED THE BEST IN THE WORLD._
=PRINCIPAL DEPOT:=
92 FULTON STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
SURE POP
INSECT POWDER KILLERS.
This valuable little instrument was patented by me years ago. It is a handly little machine for dusting the Insect Powder around. It is made of vulcanized rubber, having a metallic top.
=PRINCIPAL DEPOT:=
92 FULTON STREET,
NEW YORK CITY.
SURE POP
Patent Insect Powder Bellows.
PATENTED APRIL 29, 1884. NUMBER OF PATENT, 297,693.
THE ADVANTAGES OF THIS MACHINE OVER ALL OTHERS ARE:
1. It is easily loaded.
2. There is no waste of powder.
3. The Powder can not get back into the Bellows.
4. The top can not get worked off.
5. The Bellows are made under my own supervision, and every one is guaranteed.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including unusual spelling and inconsistent hyphenation.
"skarks' fins" has been changed to "sharks' fins".