The writer of this curious piece takes his _cue_ from that remarkable production, _An Attempt towards a Natural History of the Polype_, 1743; in which the learned Mr. Henry Baker, in a letter to Martin Folkes, of 218 pages, 8vo., illustrated by a profusion of woodcuts, elaborately describes this link between the animal and vegetable creation, and the experiments he practised upon the same: commencing with "cutting off a polype's head," and so on through a series of scientific barbarities upon his _little creature_, which ended only in "turning a polype inside out!" Following the plan of Mr. Baker, the anonymous author of _The Hanover Rat_ tells us, that, after thirty years' laborious research, he had {482} satisfied himself that this animal was not a native of these islands: "I cannot," he says, "particularly mark the date of its first appearance, yet I think it is within the memory of man;" and finding favour in its original _mine affamee_ state with a few of the most starved and hungry of the English rats from the common sewer, he proceeds to show that it _did_ extirpate the natives; but whether this is the best account, or whether the facts of the case as here set forth will satisfy your correspondent, is another thing. According to _my_ authority, the aboriginal rat was, at the period of writing, sorely put to it to maintain his ground against the invading colonists and their unnatural allies the _providers_; and the present work seems to have been an effort on the part of one in the interest of the former to awaken them to a sense of their danger. In his laudable attempts to rally their courage, this advocate reminds them of a similar crisis when their country was infested with a species of frog called _Dutch frogs_: "which no sooner," says he, "began to be mischievous, than its growth and progress was stopped by the natives." "Had we," he continues, "but the same public spirit with our ancestors, we need not complain to-day of being eaten up by _rats_. Our country is the same, but alas! we feel no more the same affection for it." In this way he stimulates the invaded to a combined attack upon the common enemy, and we need not tell _our_ readers how successfully, nor how desperate the struggle, the very next year; which ended in the complete ascendancy of the _Hanover rat_, or reigning family, over the unlucky Jacobite native. Under his figure of a rat, this Jacobite is very scurrilous indeed upon the Hanoverian succession; and, continuing his _polypian_ imitations, relates a few coarse experiments upon _his subject_ illustrative of its destructive properties, voracity, and sagacity, which set at nought "all the contrivances of the farmer to defend his barns; the trailer his warehouse; the gentleman his land; or the inferior people their cup-boards and small beer cellars. No bars or bolts can keep them out, nor can any gin or trap lay hold of them."