Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/321

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my under-graduateship at Cambridge, I used occasionally to amuse myself with pistol-shooting; and when tired of perforating the mark on the tree, or in the gravel-pit, would bend my steps to the river or ditches, on the banks of which I was pretty sure to find abundance of water-rats. On one of these occasions I first noticed a peculiarity in the habits of the water-rat, which I have since seen exhibited in various places and at various times. This peculiarity resembles what in man is called "loss of presence of mind;"—what it is to be called in the rat, I do not know.

In the excursions above mentioned, I made use of a pocket pistol almost as frequently as of that more unerring instrument, the double-sighted, hair-triggered, duelling pistol; and, consequently, I missed my mark more frequently than I hit it.

Armed with this weapon on the occasion in question, I espied a rat sitting on the bank of a ditch: I fired at and missed it, but it scarcely moved. I reloaded—and it is a work of time to load a pocket pistol—fired again, and with the same result. Six times did I reload, and seven times did I fire, before the persecuted animal made an attempt to escape. If, after a shot, it moved at all, it seemed to do so unconsciously, and only a few inches, and then stopped again. After the seventh shot it rather fell than jumped into the water, but did not attempt to dive, as they almost invariably do when disturbed at any distance from their hole, but swam slowly along by the side. A stone I threw took effect on its head, and I succeeded in getting it out; but on looking at it closely, I could not find the least trace of injury inflicted by either of my balls: all its powers, beyond the merely mechanical ones, seemed to have been completely paralyzed by terror at the first report.

If any suspicion had remained in my mind, as to the possibility of the first ball having grazed its head, and produced this idiotcy (if I may so use the word), it would have been effectually removed by subsequent experience. Nor can it be said "perhaps it was a young one, and not come to 'years of discretion.'" It was an old rat and of large size: and moreover, the largest water-rat I ever saw in my life, betrayed, under similar circumstances, the same symptoms. The last-mentioned, too, had even more abundant and inviting opportunities of escape than the former. I was in a "funny,"—as the small boats at Cambridge are called,—on the Cam, floating slowly down the stream,