ame thing and not be bitten. Should there be only
two or three in the bag, then they will bite, but not in the event of
there being a good number. The same rule applies to Rats stored in a
cage, where there is open daylight--if there be 40 or 50 Rats together,
it is then the habit of the Rats for all to cling together, and they will
let you handle them anyway if only you will have sufficient courage.

It is very good sport for gentlemen who want a good day's outing to go to
farms when threshing is on, and also to go hunting and ferreting round
the corn and wheat fields, and I think many sporting gentlemen who have
not seen such sport would indulge in it freely after they had once
witnessed it. I think it is much better and healthier sport than rabbit-
shooting, especially in the summer when the farmers are cutting their
corn and wheat.

When catching Rats as a regular pursuit, one is surprised at the queer
places in which he finds them. I recollect ferreting seven full-sized
Rats from under the floor of a built dog kennel not above four yards
square, where a large mastiff and a terrier dog slept every night, only a
3/4-inch board dividing them from the Rats, and the Rats having eaten
holes through the boards in the kennel! I have also found at an
out-house an old bitch Rat and nine young ones in an old tin trunk
without a lid. I have also caught Rats and taken young ones out of the
nest from under railway sleepers where trains have been running and
shunting operations carried on every day. And I have even taken old and
young ones in their nest from a pile of Cheshire cheese, at a wholesale
cheese and bacon factor's!

And mentioning cheese in this connection reminds me that once I
discovered that Rats had scratched and eaten a hole direct through the
bottom lot of cheese in a pile which had only been there three weeks.

A word or two about what a Rat will do with a ferret. I have often seen
a Rat run a ferret out of the hole, and then wait with its head out of
the hole until the ferret has come to it again. I remember once
ferreting at a hencote, and put the ferret behind the hen nest, whereupon
the Rat attacked the ferret, which then jumped back and died in five
minutes, the Rats having given only one bite behind the ferret's ear! Of
course this is a very rare occurrence. True, I have had many ferrets
killed by Rats in my time, but it has always occurred through the
poisonous bite first swelling and then "