These are most pernicious animals. They borough, and prey on our food, drink, clothing, furniture, live-stock, and every convenience of life; furnishing their residences with the plunder of our property. They have particular haunts, to which they entice each other in large numbers, for the sake of _prey_; where they often do incredible damage to our _mounds_, and undermine the strongest _embankments_. Sometimes they hoard their plunder in _nests_, that they make at a distance from their usual _places of congregating. * They are very bold and fierce. Instead of waiting for an attack, they usually become the aggressors, and, _seizing their adversaries by the lips_, inflict dangerous, and even deadly wounds. While they subsist on our industry, and increase our terrors, they make no grateful returns, and, therefore, mankind have studied various ways for diminishing their numbers; but their _cunning_ discovers the most distant danger, and if any are disturbed or attacked, in an unusual manner, the rest take the alarm, and, becoming exceedingly shy, and wary, elude the most ingenious devices of their pursuers. When, unhappily, you come in contact with one of these _vermin_, the best way of dispatching it is by a single squeeze; but novices who hesitate, are sure to prove sufferers. They have been found on a bench, so _interwoven_ by their tails, that _by reason of their entanglement, they could not part. ** A dead rat, _by altering the look of his head and the appearance of his skin_, may be transformed into the appearance of a much more _powerful_ animal; and this, Ladies and Gentlemen, _has been considered a master piece in cheating._*** * White's Selborne, 4to. 75. ** Letters from Bodleian Library, i. 12. *** Ibid.ii. 160, note. See also Goldsmith, iii. 169. {102} [Illustration: 110] A CADGE ANCHOR.--(a Remora--a sucking Fish.) What have we here? a man or a fish? A Fish: he _smells_ like a fish ; a very _ancient_ and fish-like smell; a kind of, not of the newest, Poor John. Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver: _there_ would this monster make a man; any _strange beast_ there makes a man. His gabbling voice is to utter foul speeches, and to detract. He is as disproportioned in his manners, as in his shape. As with age his body grows uglier, his mind cankers. * Caliban. {103} [Illustration: 111] A WATER SCORPION. Ladies and Gentlemen,