The chapter on the points of stock--cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses--would of itself have afforded us materials for an interesting article. Breeding and crossing of stock, both so necessary to be well understood by those who would breed for _profit_, are also ably discussed by our author; and it is only want of space which prevents us from quoting from this chapter.
But there are some kinds of live _cattle_ which of themselves breed too fast even for Mr Stephens; and these he as anxiously instructs his readers how to exterminate. Among these are rats, in regard to the destruction of which the following passage will interest our readers:--
"Of all the modes I ever witnessed rats being killed, none equalled that of a Yorkshireman, of the name of John Featherston, by means of steel-traps. He had twenty-one small steel-traps, which he kept clean and bright. He soon traced the tracks of rats along the floor to a corner, or on the tops of walls, leading commonly by the corners of apartments to the partition wall, which they surmounted between it and the slates; the very place which I have recommended the filling up, to break off such communications. After he had discovered the different runs of the animals, he made a number of small firm bundles of straw, which he placed against the bottom of a wall where the run was on a floor, and upon its top where the run was to the roof. He used seven traps at one place at a time, and a sufficient number of bundles of straw was used to conceal that number of traps at each place, employing the entire number of traps in three places, at a little distance from each other, and in different apartments. The traps were set, but not allowed to spring at first, and baited with oatmeal, scented with oil of rhodium, and placed in a row, with a little chaff over them, in the run behind the bundles of straw. The traps were baited for two days, the baits being replenished as soon as it was discovered, by inspection, that a bait disappeared. On the third day the traps were baited as before, but the restriction was removed from the spring, and then began the capture. In all the three days, people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the apartments in which the traps were placed, and dogs were entirely excluded. Removing the check from the spring, from one set of traps after another, armed with short stout stick, and furnished with a bag slung from his shoulder, Featherston put himself on the alert, and the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it, removed the bundle of straw, knocked the rat on the head if alive, threw it out of the trap, set it again, replaced the bundle again, put the rat into the bag, and was again on the watch from one place to another. In the course of the third day, from morning to the afternoon, he had collected 385 rats in the bag, and allowing all the traps to have done equal execution, each had caught more than eighteen rats in the course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food, and in three days he earned his food and L.1, 12s. 1d.--such was his expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by this capture; but they received such a thinning, as to be comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business, on the day following the capture, was to clean each trap bright before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other circumstance--that the suspicion of the rats, I suppose, of the danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows in fields, and commits ravages on growing crops, whether of corn or turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland, and assisted at routing them with spade and terrier, but have never heard of their having taken to the fields in Scotland."