Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/322

294 and therefore every instant widening the distance between myself and the rat, which was partially concealed among tall flags on the river bank. But I had certainly two, and, I think, three, shots at him, and the effect of the first was just to make him show himself more plainly.

A short time after, I was on a visit in Norfolk, at a place about six miles from Brandon. Here there were many ditches, dividing the meadows from one another, and in the banks of these ditches there were immense numbers of water-rats. If I chanced to catch one asleep and threw a stone at it, and the stone made much noise and splash, the rat generally behaved in the same way, and waited patiently until a second or third missile had been directed at it.

And very recently I have witnessed a more striking instance still; for in this case there was no noise to startle, much less to terrify. I was fishing in the stream which flows near my residence, and on jumping across a small burn running into it, came upon a water-rat. It took to the water immediately, of course: but the water was shallow and it could not dive; and the current .was strong and it could not make much progress. When it had swum about six or eight feet into the stream, I tapped it with the end of my fly-rod, which is not thicker than a crow-quill, and therefore could not inflict a very severe blow, even if I were willing to risk breaking it, by striking with some degree of force. On receiving the' tap the rat attempted to dive; but in vain, by reason of the shallowness of the water. I repeated the tap, and the rat took no notice of it. I then gave it a third touch, when it turned directly round, put its head under water (which was now a little deeper), and swam directly to my feet; thus running headlong into the danger it had endeavoured to avoid. Had it turned its head down-stream, it would have been in safety immediately; but in the extremity of its alarm, occasioned by my sudden appearance and heightened by the application of the rod, it seemed to lose all self-possession, and to be incapable of showing that instinctive apprehension of what is best to be done, which all animals, when threatened by danger, are so ready to exhibit.

I know of nothing analogous to this (what I suppose to be) manifestation, on the part of the water-rat, of the effects of terror. The Hanover rat betrays nothing of the kind; and I have shot at them almost as often as at water-rats.,They frequently visited my rooms at Cambridge, and, in the long vacation, in considerable numbers: indeed I have shot them as I sat reading. Yet even here, although the report of the pistol seemed louder, from the circumstance of the sound being confined, and though the rat shot at might be a juvenile mem-