How to prevent this happening I will give you a plan of my own, which I don’t think any Rat-catcher but myself has ever employed.  The course of action—­a rather expensive one I admit—­is the following:  While you have the boards up you must go to the druggist and get two shillings’ worth of cayenne pepper, and put it into a pepper duster.  Scatter the cayenne along the boards and joist where you have had the long sheet net, and also along the other end of the joist where you put the ferrets in, and you will find that under no consideration will Rats face the cayenne pepper.  Cayenne is alright for any dry place and will last a long time, but it will not do in any water closets or any damp places, as dampness takes all the nature out of the cayenne.

After ferreting in any kind of building, always go carefully round the outside, and see that there are no broken air grids, or broken cellar windows, as these are likely ways that the Rats get into the building at first.  When ferreting always be careful how you set your nets, and be extremely quick on the Rats when they bolt, for sometimes if they get back they will face the ferret before they will bolt again; then the ferrets kill them under the floors, and this as in the case of poisoning them is liable to cause an abominable smell, more especially where heat is near.

In the whole of my experience of Rat-catching, which is a lengthy one, I never gave a guarantee to clear a place completely, in Manchester or any other town where so many large buildings are so close together.  And let me show the reason for this.  Take Cannon Street, Manchester, as an illustration.  Here are six or eight different firms in one block of buildings.  Now, suppose four of these firms are suffering from the damage the Rats are doing.  Well, one or two of these firms may go to the expense of having the Rats cleared away.  But between the two buildings there may be a hardware business or ironmonger’s shop, where Rats cannot do any harm to their goods.  The owners of these shops will not go to the expense of having Rats caught, nor will they let us go into their shops at midnight; therefore the result is the Rat-catcher in his trapping and ferreting is limited to these two places, and all he can do is to catch some and drive the rest into the hardware shop.  When under the floors in such places one finds there has been so many alterations made at different times that one joist may be a foot or six inches below the other, and when the Rats are completely driven out of these places it would require joiners and bricksetters to work for weeks under the floors to stop the Rats returning.  And most firms will not go to this expense.  I only give my readers this as an illustration of what has often happened with me, and to show why I never guarantee to clear Rats completely in large towns.  If they are in a private house, stable, greenhouse, or any block of houses, of say five or six, I might then, after looking through, give a guarantee to clear them completely.