The destructive nature of the rat, the extraordinary manner in which he multiplies, and his perpetual presence--for where there is a chink that he can fill, and food for him to eat, there he will be, notwithstanding that a long line of ancestors have one after another been destroyed on the spot[11]--necessitates some counteracting influence to keep him within due bounds. This is done by making him the prey of hunting-animals and reptiles, beginning with man, and running down the chain of organized life to the gliding snake. The poor rat, although he doubtless does service as a scavenger, and must have his use in fulfilling some essential purpose of creation, finds favour nowhere: every man's hand, nearly every feline paw, and many birds' beaks are against him. The world thinks of him, as of the pauper boy in "Oliver Twist,"--"Hit him hard; he ain't a'got no friends." Dwelling in the midst of alarms, he might be supposed to pass an uneasy and nervous existence. But it is nothing of the kind. The same Providence which has furnished him with the teeth suitable to the work they have to perform, has endowed him with the feelings proper to his lot; and no animal, if he be watched from a distance, appears more happy and complacent. In danger he preserves a wonderful presence of mind, and acts upon the principle that while there is life there is hope. His cunning on such occasions is often remarkable, and evinces a reasoning power of no contemptible order:-- "A traveller in Ceylon," says Mrs. Lee, in her entertaining "Anecdotes of Animals," "saw his dogs set upon a rat, and, making them relinquish it, he took it up by the tail, the dogs leaping after it the whole time. He carried it into his dining-room, to examine it by the light of the lamp, during the whole of which period it remained as if it were dead,--limbs hanging, and not a muscle moving. After five minutes he threw it among the dogs, who were still in a state of great excitement, and, to the astonishment of all present, it suddenly jumped upon its legs, and ran away so fast that it baffled all its pursuers."