this sport. For this purpose they are generally muzzled, which is a cruel and unnecessary practice. All that is required of the ferret is to drive and scare out—the rabbit being then caught or shot. A bell around the ferret's neck will scare off the rabbit immediately, because the ferret is slow, and the rabbit will hear him coming from a distance. A properly trained and handled ferret needs no harness of any kind. Never muzzle a ferret for rats, as he may be savagely attacked where the rats are thick, and then be unable to defend himself. Ferrets are muzzled by tying their jaws, so that they can not bite, with waxed cords, etc. There are also muzzles like those made for dogs, only fitted to the ferret's size.

A writer in a certain New York paper has put the ferrets to a peculiar use, on account of their flexible bodies. The following is quoted from a supposititious interview with the present writer: "A gentleman purchased a ferret, and became greatly attached to it. To show me how well he had trained him since the purchase, he called Pet (as he had dubbed him) to his side, and, dropping his pencil behind a large immovable desk, where it would be almost impossible to get it again, he merely said, "Get it!" In an instant the ferret was off, and soon back again with the pencil in his mouth. The gentleman said that he had been of great service to him in that way, and he recommended them to all old ladies who are in the habit of losing thimbles and spectacles in out-of-the-way nooks and holes." We can not help remarking, that this certainly imputes a trifle too much intelligence to the animal.

There seems to be a curious superstition regarding the ferret amongst the lower classes of people from England, Ireland, and Scotland, to the effect that the ferret possesses healing properties. I have numbers of people come to me with pans of milk, part of which they want the ferrets to lap up, reserving the other half for medicine. They firmly believe this an infallible cure for whooping-cough in children. On some days so many people come for this purpose, with milk[Pg 25]
[Pg 26] in all sorts of vessels, that the ferrets would certainly have burst their buttons, if they had any, in trying to do justice to all of it. The people wait their turn patiently, and come any day I appoint to have the ferrets drink some of the milk. I have heard many miraculous accounts from them of Mrs. So-and-so's baby who was down "that sick" with the whooping-cough, and the "doctors givin' her up, and she comin' to directly by a drop o' the milk the blessed little craythurs had been lappin' at; and it's the only rale rimedy yer can put intire faith in."

The following is an extract from a Kansas newspaper: "An old Englishman is now traveling through the country with two pair of ferrets, with which he is making money by killing prairie-dogs. He has his pets in a wire cage, and, going to a ranch where there are indications of prairie-dogs, he offers to clean out the dog-town for 1 cent per dog. The price appears so very small, that the ranchman does not hesitate to accept the offer. One ferret will clean out from twenty to fifty dogs before he tires out, or, rather, before he gets so full of blood of his victims that he can't work well. When one is tired out, a fresh one is put into service; and so on until the town is rid of dogs."

THE RAT.

I.—THE RAT FAMILY AND ITS VARIETIES.

The cynical, and, as he is generally acknowledged, villainous old rat, is a near kinsman of as innocent and peaceful a community as the squirrels, rabbits, and hares are, at least the natural histories unite in telling us that they all belong to the Rodentia or gnawing animal family. The three great subdivisions of rat are the Black, Brown and Water varieties. With the latter we have nothing to do, as it is an innocent field animal that never goes near man or his works, and is not properly one of the "whiskered vermin race" or rat breed. The dock rats belong to the Brown brigade.

II.—RAT HISTORY.

Regarding the rat's history and antecedents we are informed in some books on this subject, very positively, that the common or Brown rat was brought from Norway, while other naturalists insist with a pertinacity peculiar to the tribe that the animal originally comes from Persia and India. We feel justified in believing with the majority that this kind of vermin has its origin in Asia, that venerable continent of cholera, Heathen-Chinee, and Old Testament. But again, whatsoever the different opinions may be, it is certainly found that this species of rodent is distributed over every country on the face of the earth in a very near equal way, because every ship that leaves port takes in its cargo of rats just as regularly as it does its cargo of provisions and merchandise, and thus it can be readily seen how this delicate tender blossom is carefully though unwittingly transplanted. In this way the Brown rat, which is now the strongly predominant rat party, was brought to New York and America in 1775 from England, which would doubtless give great pleasure to that part of the population with an Anglo-maniac tendency and would probably reconcile them much more to this sect of vermin. In Europe the latter made their appearance in 1730, and then spread out to every inhabitable country. "For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever" would at the first glance seem to be the case with the rat tribe as well as with the musical brooklet of Tennyson, yet the history of the rat nations is like unto the history of man—one clan waging a long and bitter war of conquest and extermination against the other until hardly any trace of the conquered but once mighty and ambitious race remains. The Black or Indigenous rat had things all its own way in North America as well as through the rest of the civilized earth, before the Brown species' sweeping invasion, the former having been entirely subdued and are now very scarce. It was easy enough for the brown rats to do this, because they were bigger, bolder, and more ferocious. Their multiplying powers, too, were sixteen times greater than the vanquished nation whose origin is shrouded in the darkest and most complete mystery.

The writer has on several occasions observed a dark colored rat on vessels coming from Brazil and other States of South and Central America that was unlike any specimen of this animal he had remembered ever seeing before. It was of a deep bluish tint, had an abnormally long tail, very large ears, and sharp, fiery, bead-like eyes, that looked in the dark like small electric lamps. Its agility and desperate nervousness was something marvelous, and its bump of destructiveness was largely developed also. This is probably a stray representative from some struggling colony of the dethroned black rat nation. Small numbers of them are occasionally brought to our own shores by these vessels. The rats generally escape from the ships, whereupon, as soon as the vessel is about to sail away again, their places are promptly filled by their brown brethren. Then the desolate black rats stray to the sewers of the city, where they are speedily overwhelmed and dispatched by members of the other faction, their inveterate foes and conquerors.

III.—THE KING'S OWN RAT CATCHER.

Although this black rat is inferior to the brown tribe in strength, size, and breeding powers, yet it must have been formidable also, for it was formerly thought necessary in England to institute the queer court position of rat catcher to the King.