ed with
oatmeal, scented with oil of rhodium, and placed in a row, with a
little chaff over them, in the run behind the bundles of straw. The
traps were baited for two days, the baits being replenished as soon
as it was discovered, by inspection, that a bait disappeared. On the
third day the traps were baited as before, but the restriction was
removed from the spring, and then began the capture. In all the three
days, people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the
apartments in which the traps were placed, and dogs were entirely
excluded. Removing the check from the spring, from one set of traps
after another, armed with short stout stick, and furnished with a bag
slung from his shoulder, Featherston put himself on the alert, and
the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it, removed the
bundle of straw, knocked the rat on the head if alive, threw it out
of the trap, set it again, replaced the bundle again, put the rat
into the bag, and was again on the watch from one place to another.
In the course of the third day, from morning to the afternoon, he had
collected 385 rats in the bag, and allowing all the traps to have
done equal execution, each had caught more than eighteen rats in the
course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food, and
in three days he earned his food and L.1, 12s. 1d.--such was his
expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by
this capture; but they received such a thinning, as to be
comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business,
on the day following the capture, was to clean each trap bright
before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater
reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other
circumstance--that the suspicion of the rats, I suppose, of the
danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows
in fields, and commits ravages on growing crops, whether of corn or
turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland, and assisted at
routing them with spade and terrier, but have never heard of their
having taken to the fields in Scotland."

_Farm book-keeping_ is a subject too little attended to by our practical
men. In our own neighbourhood we know that keeping books is the
exception--keeping none is the rule. T