In this connection it is arresting to read Burt on the pathology of the Black Death. The disease spread at a rate of five miles a day. But rats (which alone carry the plague flea, xenopsylla cheops), are not wanderers: 250 metres and they’ve had enough. So was it an airborne infection? Was it in fact anthrax, which also produces buboes on its victims?
The chapter entitled ‘Hero of Science’ is completely fascinating and revolting: a page-turner. The final chapter deals with rats as pets. Modern varieties acceptable to the National Fancy Rat Society include Champagne, Russian Blue, Topaz and Lilac Agouti. There are Rat Olympics.
The illustration entitled ‘Vermine Fasciste’, which is dated 1968, surely has an anti-Semitic undertone, redolent of the louse posters in Germany. This might have merited a few pages, as would the Sherman-like rat migrations in Asia that take place in years of bamboo seed abundance.
The series (published by Reaktion, each title priced at £12.95) calls itself ‘a new kind of animal history’. It is, splendidly, even brilliantly, so. I have nothing but praise for it. Among the illustration sponsors are the British Academy and Jesus College, Cambridge. Let that also be recorded in these columns.
James Fleming’s latest novel, White Blood, reviewed here last week, is published by Cape, £12.99.
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