nformation. The naturalists are said to give a
very clear notion of what the rat _is_, but what he _does_ they describe
very imperfectly. Rats are modest creatures; they live and labor in the
dark; they shun the approach of man. Go into a barn or granary, where
hundreds are living, and you shall not see one; go to a rick that may be
one living mass within (a thing very common, adds our writer), and there
shall not be one visible; or dive into a cellar, that may be perfectly
infested with them, rats you shall not see, so much as a tip of a tail,
unless it be that of a stray one "popping across for a more safe
retreat." As men seldom see them, they seldom think of them. "But this I
say," goes on our author, "that if rats could by any means be made to
live on the surface of the earth, instead of holes and corners, and feed
and run about the streets and fields in the open day, like dogs and
sheep, the whole nation would be horror-stricken, and, ultimately, there
would not be a man, woman, or child able to brandish a stick, but would
have a dog, stick, or gun for their destruction wherever they met with
them. And are we to suppose, because they carry on their ravages in the
dark, that they are less destructive? Certainly not; and my object in
making this appeal to the nation, and supplying it with calculations
from the most experienced individuals and naturalists, is for the
purpose of rousing it up to one universal warfare against these midnight
marauders and common enemies of mankind, insomuch as they devour the
food, to the starvation of our fellow-creatures." He does not altogether
ignore the argument of the friends of the rat--for even the rat has
found friends among naturalists, ready to argue in his favor, and in
print, too--that these vermin destroy, in the sewers, much matter that
would otherwise give out poisonous gases. Sewer rats, he admits, are not
the very worst of the race, but even they should be slain wherever they
may be caught. But the rats of the cellar, the warehouse, the barn, the
rick-yard, the granary, and the corn-field, are the grand destroyers
against whom war to the terrier, the trap, and the ferret is proclaimed.

Do not let any reader suppose that the Ratsbane, put forth in the guise
of a blue pamphlet, is a mere tasteless dose of useful knowledge on the
rat genus. It is no such thing. The author gives a passage or two of
politics, and then a page or so of rats. He is an honest hater, such as
Dr.