"A most wonderful Rat, the greatest natural curiosity ever seen in London.
"A gigantic Female Rat, taken near Somerset House: it is truly worthy the inspection of the curious, its length being three feet three inches, and its weight ten pounds three quarters; and twenty-four inches in circumference. Any lady or gentleman purchasing goods to the amount of one shilling or upwards, will have an opportunity of seeing it gratis, at No. 5, Sweeting's Alley, Cornhill."
Rats were made use of as a plague, see 1st Book of Kings, chap. v. Nich. Poussin painted this subject, which has been engraved by Stephen Picart of Rome, 1677.
In a curious tract, entitled "Green's Ghost," published in 1626, Watermen are nicknamed water-rats; an appellation also bestowed on pirates by the immortal bard of Avon.
The down of the musk-rat of Canada is used in the manufacture of hats. From the tail of the Muscovy musk-rat is extracted a kind of musk, very much resembling the genuine sort, and their skins are frequently laid among clothes to preserve them from moths.
"The musk-rat is of all the small species larger and whiter than the common. He exhales, as he moves, a very strong smell of musk, which penetrates even the best inclosures. If, for example, one of the animals pass over a row of bottles, the liquor they contain will be so strongly scented with musk that it cannot be drunk. The writer has known tons of wine touched by them so strongly infected, that it was with the greatest difficulty, and by a variety of process, that they could be purged of this smell. These rats are a great plague to all the country, and, if they once get into a cellar or magazine, are very hard to destroy. Cats will not venture to attack them, for fear probably of being suffocated by the smell; nor will the European terrier hurt them." See Les Hindous, par E. Baltazard Solvyns, tom. 4. Paris, 1812, folio.
The Norwegians of late years have the following effectual mode of getting rid of their rats:
They singe the hair of one of them over a fire, and then let it loose; the stench is so offensive to his comrades that they all immediately quit the house, and are eventually destroyed by combating with other broods. This expedient has become so general, that Norway is relieved of one of its greatest pests. The above method was communicated to the writer by a native, who wondered that our farmers had not adopted it.