Tiny, to be
raised by public subscription. But that would be a paltry return for
such great services. Tiny's renown lifts him above such mercenary
rewards.

More wonders are in store:

"Now for the vermin destroyed by Messrs. Shaw and Sabin. Taken at the
same calculation, with their three years' progeny--can you believe
it?--they would consume more food than the whole population of the
earth. Yes, if Omnipotence would raise up ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE
MILLIONS FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED more
people, these rats would consume as much food as they all!! You may
wonder, but I will prove it to you."

A calculation--like that which has made Tiny immortal--is given, and
then the reflection, succeeds, "Is it not a most appalling thing to
think that there are at the present time in the British empire,
thousands, nay millions, in a state of starvation, while rats are
consuming that which would place them and their families in a state of
affluence and comfort? I ask this simple question" (emphatically
continues our Rat Hater), "Has not Parliament, ere now, been summoned
upon matters of far less importance to the Empire? _I think it has_."

A fine opening this for an oratorical patriot, whose themes are worn
out. An agitation for protection against rats would inevitably secure
the hearty support of the agricultural interest.

Enough has surely been said to show the great importance of rats, but it
would be wrong to leave the little book which has suggested this
article, without gleaning from it a few rat-catching statistics, and
without pointing out the moral of the whole, by giving the writer's
proposition for relieving us from the scourge he describes. It seems
that one rat-catcher has frequently from one thousand five hundred to
two thousand rats in his cages at one time--it is not stated, but we
suppose--ready to be killed by "Tiny." It is averred that these are all
brought up from the country--all "fair barn rats"--and that "it would
not pay to breed them"--a question probably open to doubt. The natural
enemies of the rat are thus mustered, the ferret, polecat, stoat,
weasel, cat, dog, and man. The ferret's powers of destruction are
estimated very lightly; the polecats are very rare, prefer game when it
can be had, and do little against the rat; the weasel also prefers a
chicken or a duckling "to fighting with a rat for a meal." Hence the
farmers destroy them, and they do little against the ra