HOW FAR RATS TRAVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 3 January 1927, Page 3

HOW FAR RATS TRAVEL

■■ ' . • ■ —-♦ , As part of tho war-on-rats campaign, tests are being carried out in London to ascertain tho distances which rats will traved to obtain refuge and food. Scores of the rodents caught alive in London daily are being released after silk rings, bearing small, indestructible tabs, have been attached to their legs. Within a few days many of these rats have again been captured in parts of. London miles distant from tho places where they wore liberated, and hundreds have been trapped again in a week or two in areas fifty miles away. B. L. and NT Phillips, Ltd., the vermin destroyers, of Southwark street, S.E., stated that, one rat which a, member of their staff caught, labelled and released six months ago, near Euston Railway Station, has been found at Bradford, Yorkshire, 190 miles away. This is the longest migration so far traced. Mr. Nathaniel Phillips said to a "Daily Mail" reporter that nearly twice as m»my rats have been' destroyed in London .during, the past year as in any year before the war. He added:—"There are now more rats in London than probably there have ever been this century. The most artful devices of architects to make tho new buildings rat-proof have failed." Last year the number of rats destroyed'in London, Liverpool, Southampton. Glasgow, and other ports was : 60,000,000, an increase of 20,000,000 compared with a normal year , before the war. i