Part 14

But the black rat has kept more than is commonly imagined. Mr. Waterton is mistaken when he adopts the popular notion that the old English breed which came in with the Conqueror is almost totally annihilated by his brown cousin. The first comer has no more been destroyed by the subsequent invader than the Celt is annihilated by the triumphant Saxon. As we find the former still holding their ground in Cornwall, Wales, and the Highlands of Scotland, so we find the black rat flourishing in certain localities. In the neighbourhood of the Tower, in Whitbread's brewery, and in the Whitechapel sugar-refineries, he still holds his own, and woe be to any brown trespasser who ventures into his precincts. The weaker animal has learnt that union is strength, and, acting in masses, they attack their powerful foe as fearlessly as a flight of swallows does a hawk; but if an equal number of the two breeds are placed together in a cage without food, the chances are that all the black rats will have disappeared before morning, and, even though well fed, the brown Brobdingnags invariably eat off the long and delicate ears of their little brethren, just as a gourmand, after a substantial meal, amuses his appetite with a wafer-biscuit.

The rapid spread of the rat is due to the fearlessness with which he will follow man and his commissariat wherever he goes. Scarcely a ship leaves a port for a distant voyage but it takes in its complement of rats as regularly as the passengers, and in this manner the destructive little animal has not only distributed himself over the entire globe, but, like an enterprising traveller, continually passes from one country to another. The colony of four-footed depredators, which ships itself free of expense, makes, for instance, a voyage to Calcutta, whence many of the body will again go to sea, and land perhaps at some uninhabited island where the vessel may have touched for water. In this manner many a hoary old wanderer has circumnavigated the globe oftener than Captain Cook, and set his paws on twenty different shores. The rat-catcher to the East-India Company has often destroyed as many as five hundred in a ship newly arrived from Calcutta. The genuine ship-rat is a more delicate animal than the brown rat, and has so strong a resemblance to the old Norman breed, that we cannot help thinking they are intimately related. The same fine large ear, sharp nose, long tail, dark fur, and small size, characterize both, and a like antipathy exists between them and the Norwegian species. It is by no means uncommon to find distinct colonies of the two kinds in the same ship--the one confining itself to the stem, the other to the stern of the vessel. The same arrangement is often adopted in the warehouses of seaports, the ship's company generally locating themselves as near the water as possible, and the landsmen in the more inland portion of the building.

When rats have once found their way into a ship, they are secure as long as the cargo is on board, provided they can command the great necessary--water. If this is well guarded, they will resort to extraordinary expedients to procure it. In a rainy night they will come on deck to drink, and will even ascend the rigging to sip the moisture which lies in the folds of the sails. When reduced to extremities, they will attack the spirit-casks and get so drunk that they are unable to walk home. The land-rat will, in like manner, gnaw the metal tubes which in public-houses lead from the spirit-store to the tap, and is as convivial on these occasions as his nautical relation. The entire race have a quick ear for running liquid, and they constantly eat into leaden pipes, and, much to their astonishment, receive a douche-bath in consequence. It is without doubt the difficulty of obtaining water which causes them in many cases to desert the ship the moment she touches the shore. On such occasions they get, if possible, dry-footed to land, which they generally accomplish by passing in Indian file along the mooring-rope, though, if no other passage is provided for them, they will not hesitate to swim. In the same manner they board ships from the shore, and so well are their invading habits known to sailors, that it is common upon coming into port to fill up the hawser holes, or else to run the mooring-cable through a broom, the projecting twigs of which effectually stop the ingress of these nautical quadrupeds. Their occupancy of the smaller bird-breeding islands invariably ends in their driving away the feathered inhabitants, for they plunder the nests of their eggs, and devour the young. The puffins have in this way been compelled to relinquish Puffin's Island, off the coast of Caernarvon.

The ship-rat must not be confounded with the water-rat, which is an entirely different species. The latter partakes of the habits of the beaver, and is somewhat like him in appearance. He possesses the same bluff head and long fur, in which are buried his diminutive ears. He dwells in holes in the banks of rivers, which he constructs with a land and water entrance to provide against destruction by the sudden rising of the stream. This animal lives entirely upon vegetable food, which he will now and then seek at some distance inland, and we suspect that to him may be traced many of the devastations in the fruit and vegetable gardens for which the poor sparrows get the blame. We have seen water-rats cross a wide meadow, climb the stalks of the dwarf beans, and, after detaching the pods with their teeth, shell their contents in the most workmanlike manner. They will mount vines and feed on the grapes; and a friend informs us that on one occasion he saw a water-rat go up a ladder which was resting against a plum-tree, and attack the fruit. If a garden is near the haunts of water-rats, it is necessary to watch narrowly for the holes underneath the walls, for they will burrow under the foundation with all the vigour of sappers and miners. Such is the cunning with which they drive their shafts, that they will ascend beneath a stack of wood, a heap of stones, or any other object which will conceal the passage by which they obtain an entrance. The water-rat is, however, a rare animal compared with its first-cousin, the common brown or Norway rat, which is likewise, as Lord Bacon says of the ant, "a shrewd thing in a garden." They select, according to Cobbett, the prime of the dessert--melons, strawberries, grapes, and wall-fruit; and though they do but taste of each, it is not, as he remarks, very pleasant to eat after them. Not many years since they existed in millions in the drains and sewers of the metropolis. Several causes have been in operation to diminish their numbers, and in some quarters of the town almost wholly to extinguish them. In the first place, the method of flushing the sewers lately adopted is exceedingly fatal to them. When the sluices are opened, go they must with the rush of waters, and they may be seen shot out by hundreds from the mouths of the culverts in the Thames. The fact that rats are worth three shillings a dozen for sporting purposes proves, however, the most certain means of their destruction, for it insures their ceaseless pursuit by the great hunter, man. The underground city of sewers becomes one vast hunting-ground, in which men regularly gain a livelihood by capturing them. Before entering the subterraneous world, the associates generally plan what routes they will take, and at what point they will meet, possibly with the idea of driving their prey towards a central spot. They go in couples, each man carrying a lighted candle with a tin reflector, a bag, a sieve, and a spade; the spade and sieve being used for examining any deposit which promises to contain some article of value. The moment the rat sees the light, he runs along the sides of the drain just above the line of the sewage water; the men follow, and speedily overtake the winded animal, which no sooner finds his pursuers gaining upon him, than he sets up a shrill squeak, in the midst of which he is seized with the bare hand behind the ears, and deposited in the bag. In this manner a dozen will sometimes be captured in as many minutes. When driven to bay at the end of a blind sewer, they will often fly at the boots of their pursuers in a most determined manner.

The favourite stronghold of the rat is that portion of the house-drain which opens at right angles into the main sewer. Here he sits like a sentinel, and in security watches with his keen but astonished eyes the extraordinary apparition running with a light. It is a remarkable fact that most untrapped house-drains are inhabited by their own particular rats, and woe be to the intruder who ventures to interfere with those in possession. The rat as well as the cat may thus be classed among the domestic animals of the household, who acts as a kind of preventive puss in keeping out the whole underground community of vermin, which otherwise would have the run of our basements.

These vermin congregate thickest in the neighbourhood of slaughter-houses, or, in other words, where food is most plentiful. They are frequently found sitting in clusters on the ledge formed by the invert of the sewers. As the scavengers of drains, they undoubtedly do good service, but it is a poor set-off for the mischief they perpetrate in destroying the brickwork of the sewers--burrowing in every direction, and thus constructing lateral cesspools, the contents of which permeate the ground and filter into the wells. In making these excavations, moreover, they invariably transfer the earth to the main sewers, and form obstructions to the flow. The accumulations of their paw-work have regularly to be removed in small trucks constructed for the purpose, and if this precaution were not taken, they would in a few years entirely destroy the vast system of subterranean culverts which have been laboriously constructed at the expense of millions. The pipe-drains with smooth barrels, which the rat's tooth cannot touch, alone baffle him; indeed, the rapid flow of water in their narrow channel prevents his even retaining his footing in them. In revenge for thus being circumvented, he has in many cases entirely ruined the newly-laid channel of pipes by burrowing under them, and causing them to dip and open at the joints.

In France the sewer authorities hold an annual hunting-match, on which occasion there is a grand capture of rats; these animals are not destined to afford sport to the "fancy" under the tender manipulations of a dog "Billy;" on the contrary, our neighbours have too much respect for the integrity of his hide. We are informed that they have established a company in Paris, upon the Hudson's Bay principle, to buy up all the rats of the country for the sake of their skin. The soft nap of the fur when dressed is of the most beautiful texture, far exceeding in delicacy that of the beaver, and the hatters consequently use it as a substitute. The hide is employed to make the thumbs of the best gloves, its elasticity and texture rendering it preferable to kid.

Parent Duchâtelet collected several particulars of the rats which in his day frequented the knackers' yards at Montfaucon. Attracted by the abundance of animal food, they increased so enormously that the surrounding inhabitants, hearing that the government intended to remove these establishments, were seized with apprehension lest the vermin, when deprived of their larder, should spread through the neighbourhood, and, like a flight of locusts, swallow up everything. The alarmists may even have feared lest they should meet with a similar fate to that of the Archbishop of Mayence, who, if old chronicles are to be believed, retired to a tower in one of the isles of the Rhine to escape being devoured by a host of these creatures whose appetites were set upon him, and who, pertinaciously pursuing him to his retreat, succeeded in eating him up at last. The report of the Commission instituted to inquire into the circumstances of the Montfaucon case, showed that the apprehensions of serious damage were by no means unfounded.

"If the carcases of dead horses be thrown during the day in a corner, the next morning they will be found stripped of their flesh. An old proprietor of one of the slaughter-houses had a certain space of ground entirely surrounded by walls, with holes only large enough for the ingress and egress of rats. Within this inclosure he left the carcases of two or three horses; and when night came, he went quietly with his workmen, stopped up the holes, and then entered into the inclosure, with a stick in one hand and a lighted torch in the other. The animals covered the ground so thickly that a blow struck anywhere did execution. By repeating the process after intervals of a few days, he killed 16,050 rats in the space of one month, and 2,650 in a single night. They have burrowed under all the walls and buildings in the neighbourhood; and it is only by such precautions as putting broken glass bottles round the foundation of a house attached to the establishment, that the proprietor is able to preserve it. All the neighbouring fields are excavated by them; and it is not unusual for the earth to give way and leave these subterraneous works exposed. In severe frost, when it becomes impossible to cut up the bodies of the horses, and when the fragments of flesh are almost too hard for the rats to feed upon, they enter the body and devour the flesh from the inside, so that, when the thaw comes, the workmen find nothing below the skin but a skeleton, better cleared of its flesh than if it had been done by the most skilful operator. Their ferocity, as well as their voracity, surpasses anything that can be imagined. M. Majendie placed a dozen rats in a box in order to try some experiments; when he reached home and opened the box, there were but three remaining; these had devoured the rest, and had only left their bones and tails."

We have been informed that these rats regularly marched in troops in search of water in the dusk of the evening, and that they have often been met in single file stealing beside the walls that lined the road to their drinking-place. As the pavement in Paris overhangs the gutters, the rats take advantage of this covered way to creep in safety from street to street. Their migratory habits are well known, and every neighbourhood has its tale of their travels. Mr. Jesse relates an anecdote, communicated to him by a Sussex clergyman, which tends to prove that the old English rat at least shows a consideration and care for its elders on the march which is worthy of human philanthropy. "Walking out in some meadows one evening, he observed a great number of rats migrating from one place to another. He stood perfectly still, and the whole assemblage passed close to him. His astonishment, however, was great when he saw amongst the number an old blind rat, which held a piece of stick at one end in its mouth, while another had hold of the other end of it, and thus conducted its blind companion." A kindred circumstance was witnessed in 1757 by Mr. Purdew, a surgeon's mate on board the _Lancaster_. Lying awake one evening in his berth, he saw a rat enter, look cautiously round, and retire. He soon returned leading a second rat, who appeared to be blind, by the ear. A third rat joined them shortly afterwards, and assisted the original conductor in picking up fragments of biscuit and placing them before their infirm parent, as the blind old patriarch was supposed to be. It is only when tormented by hunger that they appear to lose their fellow-feeling and to prey upon one another.

The sagacity of the rat in the pursuit of food is so great, that we almost wonder at the small amount of its cerebral development. Indeed, he is so cunning, and works occasionally with such human ingenuity, that accounts which are perfectly correct are sometimes received as mere fables. Incredible as the story may appear of their removing hens' eggs by one fellow lying on his back and grasping tightly his ovoid burden with his fore-paws, whilst his comrades drag him away by the tail, we have no reason to disbelieve it, knowing as we do that they will carry eggs from the bottom to the top of a house, lifting them from stair to stair, the first rat pushing them up on its hind and the second lifting them with its fore legs. They will extract the cotton from a flask of Florence oil, dipping in their long tails, and repeating the manoeuvre until they have consumed every drop. We have found lumps of sugar in deep drawers at a distance of thirty feet from the place where the petty larceny was committed: and a friend saw a rat mount a table on which a drum of figs was placed, and straightway tip it over, scattering its contents on the floor beneath, where a score of his expectant brethren sat watching for the windfall. His instinct is no less shown in the selection of suitable food. He attacks the portion of the elephant's tusks that abounds with animal oil, in preference to that which contains phosphate of lime; and the rat-gnawn ivory is selected by the turner as fitted for billiard-balls and other articles where the qualities of elasticity and transparency are required. Thus, the tooth-print of this little animal serves as a distinguishing mark of excellence in a precious material devoted to the decorative arts. The rat does not confine himself to inert substances: when he is hard pressed for food, he will attack anything weaker than himself. Frogs, Goldsmith says, had been introduced into Ireland some considerable time before the brown rat, and had multiplied abundantly, but they were pursued in their marshes by this indefatigable hunter, and eaten clean from off the Emerald Isle. He does not scruple to assault domestic poultry; though a rat which attempted to capture the chicken of a game-fowl was killed by the mother with beak and spur in the course of twelve minutes. The hen seized it by the neck, shook it violently, put out an eye, and plainly showed that the fowl in a conflict would be the more powerful of the two, if he was only equally daring. The number of young ducks which the rats destroyed in the Zoological Gardens rendered it necessary to surround the pools with a wire rat-fencing, which half-way up has a pipe of wirework, the circle of which is not complete by several inches in the under part, and the rat, unable to crawl along the concave roof which stops his onward path, is compelled to return discomfited.

The rats have been for a long time the pests of these gardens, attracted by the presence of large quantities of food. The grating under one of the tigers' dens is eaten through by this nimble-toothed burglar, who makes as light of copper wire as of leaden pipes. Immediately upon the construction of the new monkey-house, they took possession, and eat through the floors in every direction to get at poor Jacko's bread. Vigorous measures were taken to exclude them; the floors were filled in with concrete, and the open roof was ceiled; but they quickly penetrated through the plaster of the latter, as may be seen by the holes to this day. They burrowed in the old inclosure of the wombat till the ground was quite rotten; and they still march about the den of the rhinoceros and scamper over his impregnable hide. It is only by constantly hunting them with terriers that they can be kept down; and as many as a hundred in a fortnight are often despatched, their carcases being handed over to the vultures and eagles. Many of them seek in the daytime a securer retreat. They have frequently been seen at evening swimming in companies across the canal to forage in the gardens through the night, and in the morning they returned to their permanent quarters by the same route.

The proprietors of the bonded-wheat warehouses on the banks of the Thames are forced to take the utmost precautions against the entrance of these depredators; otherwise, they would troop in myriads from the sewers and waterside premises, and, as they are undoubtedly in the habit of communicating among their friends the whereabouts of any extraordinary supplies, they would go on increasing day by day as the report of the good news spread through rat-land. To repel their attentions, the wooden floors and the under parts of the doors of the granaries are lined with sheet-iron, and the foundations are sometimes set in concrete mixed with glass--matters too hard for even their teeth to discuss.

Country rats in the summer take to the fields, and create enormous havoc among the standing corn. They nibble off the ears of wheat, and carry them to their runs and burrows, where large stores have been found hoarded up with all the forethought of the dormouse. Farmers are often puzzled to account for the presence of rats in wheat stacks which have been placed upon the most cunningly-contrived stands. The fact is, these animals are tossed up with the sheaves to the rick, where they increase and multiply at their leisure, and frequently to such an extent, that a rick, seeming fair on the outside, is little better than a huge rat-pie.

The propensity of the rat to gnaw must not be attributed altogether to a reckless determination to overcome impediments. The never-ceasing action of his teeth is not a pastime, but a necessity of his existence. The writer of an interesting paper on rats in _Bentley's Miscellany_ has explained so clearly the dentistry of the tribe, that we extract his account:--

"The rat has formidable weapons in the shape of four small, long, and very sharp teeth, two of which are in the upper and two in the lower jaw. These are formed in the shape of a wedge, and by the following wonderful provision of nature have always a fine, sharp, cutting edge. On examining them carefully, we find that the inner part is of a soft, ivory-like composition, which may be easily worn away, whereas the outside is composed of a glass-like enamel, which is excessively hard. The upper teeth work exactly into the under, so that the centres of the opposed teeth meet exactly in the act of gnawing; the soft part is thus being perpetually worn away, while the hard part keeps a sharp, chisel-like edge; at the same time the teeth grow up from the bottom, so that as they wear away a fresh supply is ready. The consequence of this arrangement is, that, if one of the teeth be removed, either by accident or on purpose, the opposed tooth will continue to grow upwards, and, as there is nothing to grind them away, will project from the mouth and turn upon itself; or, if it be an under-tooth, it will even run into the skull above. There is a preparation in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons which well illustrates this fact. It is an incisor tooth of a rat, which, from the cause above mentioned, has increased its growth upwards to such a degree, that it has formed a complete circle and a segment of another; the diameter of it is about large enough to admit a good-sized thumb. It is accompanied by the following memorandum, addressed by a Spanish priest to Sir J. Banks, who presented it to the Museum: 'I send you an extraordinary tooth of a rat. Believe me, it was found in the Nazareth garden (to which order I belong). I was present when the animal was killed, and took the tooth; I know not its virtues, nor have the natives discovered them.'"