"saffron morn" began to dawn the capataz
gave the sweeping order for "todo el mundo"
to saddle. The gates were then unbarred,
and the cattle let forth, the men forming in a
crescent to stop the rush from the corral.
After a few minutes allowed for them to
settle, the whole moved forward, and, as soon
as we came to the herds, the men got ready
their lazos. The scenes of the former day
were renewed; night arrived; and we supped
as before. At the end of four days we made
up five hundred head of horned cattle, and
thus finished the labour of making tropa a
campo.

RATS!

THERE is nothing like being in earnest
when one begins a good work. So, evidently,
thinks the author of a blue covered
pamphlet just issued, with a title page headed
by three words and nine notes of
exclamation—Rat!!! Rat!!! Rat!!! The object
of the writer is no less than to alarm the
whole nation by showing what we lose every
year by the animals against whom he has
made such a dead set. Not content with
dilating on this fact in the body of his work,
he puts what he calls "a startling fact," upon
the blue wrapper. "One pair of rats," he
says, "with their progeny, will produce in
three years no less a number than six hundred
and forty-six thousand eight hundred and
eight rats! which will consume, day by day,
as much food as sixty-four thousand six
hundred and eighty men; leaving eight rats to
starve." This, it must be admitted, is startling
enough, but any one who has a cellar, or a
corn-bin, will be inclined to believe almost
any tale, however strong, or to applaud any
abuse however severe, which may be heaped
upon that convicted thief Rat. Midnight
burglaries, undetected by the new police, sink
into insignificance compared with the ravages
of rats of the London sewers, which steal and
destroy more, in one week, than the value of
all the robberies of plate that blaze away in
the newspapers from year's end to year's end.
And yet the plunderers go on almost
unmolested. They are too knowing for traps,
and arsenic seems to be more fatal to human,
than to quadrupedal victims. The French
Journals, the other day, described a grand
battue in the sewers of Paris, when thousands
of rats were captured and killed, and we heard
of large sums cleared by the sale of their
skins—for these thieves go about like swell
mobsmen—very well clad. But the example
of our French brethren was not imitated in
the modern Babylon. "We neither spill blood
on barricades above ground, nor in sewers
beneath it. So Mr. Rat still carries on his
plunder with impunity, to the great horror
and indignation of good housewives in general,
and of the writer we have just referred to in
particular. Protection is with him no
explanation of national distress. He says it is
all owing to rats: "The farmers have been
eaten out of house and home; bread kept up
to a starvation price, to the misery, poverty,
and crime of our manufacturing and
agricultural population. Men seldom think of
rats, because they seldom see them; but
are they less destructive because they carry
on their ravages in the dark? Certainly
not."

In another place he declares "there is not
a farmer in the British dominions but would,
if he at present had all the rats have deprived
him of within the last ten years, this moment
declare himself a wealthy man." If the real
truth could be found out, it would be a safe
speculation to back the statements of the
rat-hater against the statistics of the
Protectionists.

The question then suggests itself, what
should be done to save this waste—to stop
the plunder to banish the thieves? and we
turn to the little blue book for information.
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 labour 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 amongst naturalists, ready to argue
in his favour, 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