THE CHINA MAIL.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 1924.
FIGHTING
THE MOST
DESTRUCTIVE ANIMAL
ZOHO OF
AFTER ONE.
POROZVO
The House Rat Has Earned This Distinction and Has Stirred Up a Declaration of War -Uncle Sam's Big Fight,
UNGL
[BY FRANKLIN JOHNSON.]
TINCLE SAM has made a declaration War. with rats as his chosen enemy, and ail for the purpose of making the world safe for the food supply of the nation
The war extends from ocean to ocean B engages the interest of every state and every community. The appeal of the conflict is widespread and reports to Washington headquarters indicate that the fighting is brisk and effective,. Steady advances are reported along the entire battlefront.
In this warfare the United States Government plays the role of the Fied Piper with telling effect. The combat is dramatic and full of action-su dramatic that it has found its way into the film appropriately called movicu, In
This m "The Modern Pied Piper," was prepared by the United States Department of Agriculture to point out the menace of the rats and to entist Aghters in the war for their extermiun- Lion. The picture is in heavy demand and is serving its purpose with emphatic force.
Abundance of Rats.
continent, there are possibly three times' as many rate as there are humant beings," dvelared David E. Lantz, a government biologist, when I asked him to tell me of the fight on this national enemy. "The destruction wrought by far greater this vast horde of rodenta than that carried on by lens, tigers, wolves and all other auxious animals combined.
"There are insects, of course, that are exceedingly destructive, and these must be taken into consideration in making case nginst the rats. Probably the combined ravages of the injurious insects inflict greater economic loss than do those of rats, but it is ment that no one kind of insect destroys 1 much;
The harm done by any species of insect is usually confined to certain geographic limits, rarely extend
safe state-
aver large parts of a continent. The damage done by rats extends over the entire world, Oceans are no barrier to the activities of this particular pest.
Menace Tu Human Life. "The ral's destructiveness to property The House Rat in declared by the and crops is very great, but it is by no The animal Department to be the most destructive means routined to these.
imal in the work. At first though:mences human life as well. This rodent this way seem an extravagant state is responsible for more deaths among ment, but the experts are ready with human beings than all the wars of convincing arguments. They concede history. Not all the fatal epidemics of that as a single individual a rat is less the past were bubonic plagae, but harmful then a lion, welf or tiger, but enough of them inve been so identified to show that almost every century of there the concession is endel. The superior destructiveness of the rat the Christian era na had at least one arises from greater number, The forge great pandemie of this scourge which
destroyed millions of people. beasts of prey are comparatively scarce,
plague called 'black death' devastated but.rata are exceedingly abundant.
"In North America, or in any other Europe for fifty years of the fourteenth
The
WIRE SCREEN USED OI
WDCAS CLUDE ATS
RUINED PATS
TRASH DILES.
·A PAOL
188
carries many kinds of infectibus germs, from its haunts of filth, leaving them upon human food during is depreda tions."
Cast Lone. Ciasști.
YS HAL YIGHT
that half of this loss is represented by grain destroyed, it would take about five take its pince, million acres to produce the grain to
Defeats
Kat harbours why not a farmstead, a street, a village. a city or a seaport? Dilapidated buildinga, lumber and trash should be destroyed wherever they exist, "Man has been ghting the rat for piles, open stone walls and the like should be removed and the prentises centuries, declares Dr. Lantz. "He has relented up. On the form small strue, tures should be raised on posts at least made little progress until lately. The rodents are entrenched in fortresses of
18 inches above ground, with the space beneath left entirely open. Ratproof- man's own building. If driven out or overcome for a time.chers soon swarm.
ing by the use, of thin sheet-metal or in from neighbouring premises and the
wire netting is simple and effective. battle must be begun-unow.
Many town cellars may be made rat- have been due not so much to lack of
proof by a floor of concrete. Holes in the walls, around water or sewer pipes, cautions and an absence of concerted
should be filled with concrete to the full proper methods as to neglect of pre-
Cellar windows action. The work has been made abar. tive by providing continued subsistence width of the wall. Tof human for the rodents and by failing to destroy should be screened with heavy wire these advantages, and the campaign ful attention. Keeping food from the garbage from the kitchen, should be efficiency, due to diseases disseminated their entrenchments. Once deprived of netting. Meat houses must have care- by the rat is also to be taken into con-
"The experts figure that the constant-ligent co-operatiuh, the rats must wage pinced-in-metal-covered containers and promptly fed to swine or burned. The sideration. The sum total analling against them organized on lines of intel-reach of rats is extremely important.
Making Things Itat-proof.
rat arxi dy nuisances are as dangerous labour of an army of 200,000 men is
"A building can be made. ratproof: required to produce the materials caten und destroyed by rats. If it be assomed
century, destroying two-thirds to three fourths of the population of large terri- Lories and one-fourth of all the people the continent, or about 25,000,000 sy nearly 1,000,000, people in India The econotale lask due to rata is persons. Since 186 plague has carried alone. The disease is still entrenched in Asia, Africa, Australia and South astounding. With such statistics as are America, and cases have occurred in available the biologists figure that each rut destroys igually property valued Europe and North America also,
at two dollars. Assuming that there are nu mere rats than human beings, "Through the fleas that infest them, rats are almost wholly responsible for this brings the total yearly damage to more than $200,000,000. To this must the perpetuation and transmission of byboule plague, and it has been provedbe added the constant gapense of fight- ing, cluding the large pakl for also that Fats are active, although ot exclusive, agents in spreading pre-traps and poisons, the keep of logs and monie plague as well. Only the prompt case and the labour involved in the measures taken by the United States undertaking. Public Health Servire against these animals prevented disastrous epidemies of plague in San Francisco, Seattle and Hawaii in 1989, in Porto Rico in 1912, and in New Orleans in 1914. The rat is suspected of being a carrier of infantile paralysis, and there is no doubt that it
u losing fight.
Four Famous Chateaux
All
PIC WIRES
EO BY BITS
MAGA
in the country as in cities,"
Active Warfare.
In the with the indictment brought by the experts the Department is waging vindictive warfare against the rat. The moving picture film is merely symptom. With the co-operation of local authorities throughout the United States the Biological Survey is making determined effort to reduce the rat hazard. The co-operation of the Government agency is open to all com- munities. Hundreds of cities, towns and villages are taking advantage of the opportunity. Rat-killing weeks are proclaimed by the local council or board of commissioners and prizes are offered for trophies in the form of rat-tails delivered at specified places. A typical campaign, conducted at Asheville, N.C., involved a reward of $7.50 for the largest number of. Lalls thus delivered. with second and third prizes of $5.00 and $2.00, respectively. In these cam- paigns the experts advise the use of barium carbonate powder, mixed with any food tempting to the rodents, such an meat, fish, cheese, cereal, fruit, vegetables and the like. Bariam car. bonate is an inexpensive material to be" precured at hardware, general and drug stores.
In Barnstable county. Massachusetts, a aingio campaign resulted in the destruction of 10,000 rata. In. Mon- niouth country, New Jersey, a well- organized and well-conducted campaign killed 40,000 rats, at a cost of $275,00 to the country. Figuring an averago destruction of $2.00 a year for each rat, there is a saving of $80,000 annually in this county, giving a return of approxi- mately $300 on every dollar invested in the campaign.
CHATEAU CA
In lovely Touraine by the glow-moving Loire are the most beautiful chateaux of the world. Many of them were bullt by Francis L'after his campaign in Italy, whence he brought h He commissioned Italian veritable passion for Italian art.
artists and artisans to come to France and reproduce for him,..., regardless of expense, the glory of Italy. It was a veritable birth in France of the love for beauty.
One
of
[BY LILIAN HAYDEN HIESTON.]
TERU OF
CHENONCEAUX
in those days, and men trusted few 1 except themselves."
Chenonceaux,
Henry 11's gift, to lovely Diano de Poltiors. She ruled here with royal splendour and the Jealous queen nursed her sullen rage at the great chateau of Blois and plotted with all her Italian might. Dlone could hold any man. She' had wit and learning and great charm as well as beauty, and who was foremost in all outdoor sports and grace of dance and horsemanship. She was a diplomat too, called one of the wisest statesmen When most brilliant men of France.
her roynt lover died and Catherine turn- a gift from ed her out and reluctantly agreed to her having Chaumont
“TT W
has passed. It dominates the town of Blois and lifts its chief facade high above the narrow streeta that wind about its feet. The king's rooms to which the Duke of Guise was asked to come for friendly talk. with his majesty and where he was foully set upon and murdered, kicked and trodden upon when dead by the king jealous of his talent, his popularity and his fame, are in this front of the building. The rooms of Catherine are there where she brood- ed and consulted astrologers, longing to know when her own hour of triumph over her hated rival, beautiful Diane, would come, and where she trained her ADS in hatred and in the ways of murder. They were not equal to her. Leachings. They proved a weak and congelence-stricken and remorseful lot, but she swayed them to her will until the very streets of France ran blood.
The entrance to the chateau is around the corner, through the splendid court. yurd and between the magnificent build- ings of Louis XII. These are but two stories in height and have the ama. mented dormer windows of the period. The architecture is beautifully simple.
Protestant Henry of Navarre brought his Italian bride, Marie de Medicis, home to Blais, and it was to Blois long after that her son exiled her, but sided by friends she made a picturesque escape from the castle.
A
Blois was long used as a "pursory"! for the royal children because of the perfect French of this valley of the Luire, much more perfect than in Paris. Young Louis XIV. entered Blais in state and started from here to, sonka, hin Spanish bride. The castle was defaced by the revolution; was in 1798. used 58 barracks, in 1871 as an abode for the wounded in the disastrous Franco-Prus- sian War, and has only recently been carefully restored by the wonder-work- ing genius of French restoration. Viollet lo Due. It was long deserted by the kings of France whose whim was the new palaces of Fontainebleau and Versalles. In the time of the Enrileb occupation of most of northern France, in the time when an English king was gazes at the enormous chateau men who gloried in their work, and did
ONE OF DE:
crowned king of France in Notre Dame, Tours and Blois were safer places than very roof in a pleasure ground where be placed in a museum and carefully
OUR GREAT FRONTS
Paris and its environs, for the royalty. ane may wander for hours as if in a examined by critics. All over thin and
of France. It was at the chateần of city of the Arabian Nights. There are the other chateaux it is the same. Time
OF THE CHATEAU OF CHAMBORD
had also a high well, but this was taken Chinon not far from Biols that Joan of paths everywhere on the roof, count and money seemed to be no object, per less pinnacles, exquisite carved chim-fection was the him, even the tiny the state, Diane, imperious and lovely
down in the eighteenth century and Catherine. It was hot long before she to do her will marvellous dormer windows and animals that stand for the royal familles and conscious of her power, laughod in
Chaumont.
to the throne, lost in pleasure and neys, most wonderful of all elaborate open-or for the kings personally are carved scorn and contemptuously, refused the
This fortrean-like chateau was built icazes the immense central court open Are made her appeal to the young heir to the terrace on the river. It is sur gaiety, to take heed of the need of Then to the former bower of loved knelt and bared her slender neck for the executioner's axe. France too was work lanterns, as they are called, which in stone so faithfully that, they almost gift are really profusely ornamented towers
The chateau on the liner or court Diane came young Mary Stuart, the above the great stairways. Of stairs
wan yery Kay, and happy before the the next reign, that of Charles IX. his of towers, battlements, monts,"", drawe and find, the inside so dainty and the his oonstry enemies. It was at Blo
mother's tool. Catherine had power bridges, and every approved method of gardens within so beautiful, and every that hor banner was embroidered, the chateau aurely kan zufficient. There/sido is far mors, elaborate than on the bride of the new king, Francis II.; and full of murder and: sudden death during in the fifteenth century and was a DuK1 prining to enter this formidable fortress France, and follow her to victory over! the coronation of the king who in her nro sixty-four staircases, many of them outside, thus carrying out the lden of
ARONGA imprisonment: and "her-death-blazerted- most beatiful, and there is one in misfortzean. There are very beautiful tragedy that caused her return to hated,
without children. The line of the Treat the Loire The great apartment office particular which to the wonder of the gallerien and archdes,” With Large, glooms Scotland. She was more French during four reigns, those of Her husband mediavat defence. The large courtyard tilost thing so delicately lovely, banner that sho, bore to victory and to
tower all to itself in the French windows opening onto balconies than Scotch and had been brought up andikur three young son who all died opens onto a high terrace overlooking thing place. It has
came to an end, in Bagrace with weak with anciant tapestries and magnificent around Blote, the place of mystory, of her. Aiking not worth fighting for but That was Raved. The English wers great courtyard and has an ingenious At Chambord the building in the at the French court and loved Intenarly spiral, wholly openwork and with lovely midst of park of more than three the brightness and gaiety of France Francis 7 who did so much for Francis, this chatchu are shill superbly furnished
dows are seen, but the beauty of the meetings that changed the history The ascunding thousand eres, and there is a high wall. She and the young king were like joyous
homa ilie was all within the court and France Bois is of three great poriods drived wholly out of France before long Carving everywhere. and the descending passages are in the twenty-four miles in length around it, children till death separated them and and worthless sons of a murder loving furniture From the outside few win murders, of famous State, Arombitos, The fought also for her native and and
on the Bride high above the Loire of architecture and tolis of the three losing even their great stronghold samo spiral, but so arranged that people. Of course, there are secret paariges and another land called her to its throne. mother
Originally the side towards the river I grantgures through which the chapsku i Cali going up and going down never moet or nes each other. Every minutast part of the carring is done by Hand by work
ато
The
teens alive' *
steps from one emits of rooms to another, Who can wonder if she took with her. It was she who instigated and cari hidden in the walls. There was intrigue to Scotland knowledge of intrigue and, but the horrible massacre of St. Bartho and mystery, love-making and murder murder from the fatoful court of lomew, forcing her son, the weak
Of course, ther