Note 62 — Chapter II

The rat and the mouse, though not voluntarily transported, are passengers by every ship that sails from Europe to a foreign port, and several species of these quadrupeds have, consequently, much extended their range and increased their numbers in modern times. From a story of Heliogabalus related by Lampridius, Hist. Aug. Scriptores, ed. Casaubon, 1690, p. 110, it would seem that mice at least were not very common in ancient Rome. Among the capricious freaks of that emperor, it is said that he undertook to investigate the statistics of the arachnoid population of the capital, and that 10,000 pounds of spiders (or spiders' webs—for aranea is equivocal) were readily collected; but when he got up a mouse show, he thought ten thousand mice a very fair number. I believe as many might almost be found in a single palace in modern Rome. Rats are not less numerous in all great cities, and in Paris, where their skins are used for gloves, and their flesh, it is whispered, in some very complex and equivocal dishes, they are caught by legions. I have read of a manufacturer who contracted to buy of the rat catchers, at a high price, all the rat skins they could furnish before a certain date, and failed, within a week, for want of capital, when the stock of peltry had run up to 600,000.