Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/324

296 of which I felt convinced no fish had anything to do: and as nothing but either a rat or a fish could have been the guilty party, I fear the former will not go out of court with his character uninjured. It is true, a Hanover rat may sometimes be found on the river-bank, and a late article in ' The Zoologist' (Zool. 212) shows that he has a partiality (and gratifies it too) for lampems. Now if he can capture a living lampern, he can surely carry off a dead bait, which, though thrown far into the water, is not unfrequently brought by circumstances near to the side. Still, the Hanover rat, although equally willing to sup on fish, has not the same capabilities as his congener for catching them, and besides, is (comparatively) very rarely, and but at one season of the year, found near the water.

Note on the Water-rat. "A large stagnant piece of water in an inland county, with which I was intimately acquainted, and which I very frequently visited for many years of my life, was one summer suddenly infested with an astonishing number of the shorttailed water-rat, none of which had previously existed there. Its vegetation was the common products of such places, excepting that the larger portion of it was densely covered with its usual crop, the smooth horsetail (Equisetum limosum). This constituted the food of the creatures, and the noise made by their champing it we could distinctly hear in the evening at many yards' distance. They were shot by dozens daily; yet the survivors seemed quite regardless of the noise, the smoke, the deaths, around them. Before the winter, this great herd disappeared, and so entirely evacuated the place, that a few years after I could not obtain a single specimen. They did not disperse, for the animal is seldom found in the neighbourhood, and no dead bodies were observed. They had certainly made this place a temporary station in their progress from some other; but how such large companies can change their situations unobserved in their transits is astonishing. Birds can move in high regions and in obscurity, and are not commonly objects of notice; but quadrupeds can travel only on the ground, and would be regarded with wonder, when in great numbers, by the rudest peasant."— ' Journal of a Naturalist,' p. 142.

district to which the following observations apply, presents features different from those exhibited by some parts of England, and these it may be useful to note. Our fields are generally of a moderate or large size, well fenced with hawthorn hedges, and sometimes, though rarely, with stone walls: approved modern practice reduces the former to the smallest possible dimensions compatible with utility.