the Rodents. I have trapped as many as 114 in one night in this
way.

In time, however, the Rats will cease to go near sawdust. Then you must
procure a bag of fine soot from any chimney sweep, and you will find that
they will go at the soot just as keen as they did in the first instance
at the sawdust. When they get tired of soot (which they will in time)
you must procure some soft tissue paper and cut it fine, and use that in
the same way as the sawdust and the soot. You can also use light chaff
or hay seeds with the like result.

I must not omit to tell my readers to always trap Rats in the night, and
to go very quietly about it, for if you make much noise they will give
over feeding. You must not go about with too big a light whilst
trapping. You should stay at the building from dark until midnight, and
every time a Rat is caught in the trap you should go with a bull's eye
lamp, take it out of the trap or kill it, and then set the trap again, as
you have the chance of another Rat in the same trap. From experience I
can say that you need not stay in any place after 12 o'clock at night, as
I think that the first feed is the best, and that the first three hours
are worth all the other part of the night. You can go home at 12
o'clock, and be sure to be in the place by 6 or 7 a.m., for many a Rat
caught in the trap by the front leg will, if it gets time, eat off its
leg and get away again, and they are very cunning to catch afterwards.

NEVER HAVE YOUR TRAPS SET IN THE DAYTIME.

Handle them as little as possible. Always catch as many Rats as you can
in your buildings in January and February, as they begin to breed in
March, and every bitch Rat means, on the average, eight more. Also get
as much ferreting done as possible before breeding time, for a young Rat
can get into the ends of the joisting under a floor, where a ferret
cannot get near it, and the consequence is that a ferret is unable to
cope with its task. The best thing I can advise for clearing young Rats
is a good cat, one that must not be handled nor made a pet of, but
allowed to live in almost a wild state. A good cat can do as much, in my
opinion, in one night, when Rats are breeding, as two ferrets can do in a
day, especially in a building where there are cavity walls, as it is
impossible for a ferret to follow a Rat in such walls.

This is all the information I am able to give on the trapping of Rats--a
method I have proved by 25 years