[4] Assam tea is the only exception to this rule, but very little of it is imported.
[5] That sold by Messrs. Dakin, of St. Paul’s Churchyard.
[6] It will be scarcely necessary to say that the great London brewers have never laid themselves open to the suspicion of having adulterated their liquor.
[7] An act has lately been passed which will, we trust, check in some degree the grosser food-frauds on the public.
[8] Since gone to make bears’ grease.
[9] The great merit of this inference may be judged from the circumstance that several eminent naturalists, out of an honest regard for the reputation of Professor Owen, endeavoured to prevent the publication of the paper in which, with the sure sagacity of scientific genius, he confidently announced the fact.
[10] The history of the migrations of the rat is involved in doubt, and none of the accounts can be relied on. Goldsmith had been assured that the Norway rat, as it is called, though it was quite unknown in that country when it established itself in England, came to us from the coast of Ireland, whither it had been carried in the ships that traded in provisions to Gibraltar.
[11] When the atmospheric railway to Epsom was at work, the rats came for the grease which was used to make the endless leather valve, which ran on the top of the suction-pipe, air-tight. Some of them entered the tube, from which they were sucked with every passing train; nevertheless, day by day, others were immolated in the same manner.
[12] A native in India, observing one day a rat run across the floor, stooped to look after it. While in this position he suddenly felt something tugging him back by his hair, and on putting up his hand found a large cobra struggling to free his teeth from his locks. The reptile had also observed the rat, and had dropped from the roof, when the peon suddenly interposed his person between the hunter and his prey. The snake and the rat escaped; but the magistrate of the district having ordered the house to be pulled down the next day, the cobra was found with the rat half digested in his stomach.
[13] A single dead rat beneath a floor will render a room uninhabitable. A financier, of European celebrity, found his drawing-room intolerable. He supposed that the drains were out of order, and went to a great expense to remedy the evil. The annoyance continued, and a ratcatcher guessed the cause of the mischief. On pulling up the boards, a dead rat was discovered near the bell-wire. The bell had been rung as he was passing, and the crank had caught and strangled him.