Here they formed a nest for their young ones by descending to the library shelves and biting away the leaves of various books.

Snug and comfortable was the little household, until, one day, the builder's men having finished, the poles were removed, and--alas! for the rats--the hole was closed up with bricks and cement.

Buried alive, the father and mother, with five or six of their offspring, met with a speedy death, and not until a few years ago, when a restoration of the Chapter House was effected, was the rat grave opened again for a scaffold pole, and all their skeletons and their nest discovered.

Their bones and paper fragments of the nest may now be seen in a glass case in the Chapter House, some of the fragments being attributed to books from the press of Caxton.

This is not the case, although there are pieces of very early black-letter books not now to be found in the Abbey library, including little bits of the famous Queen Elizabeth's Prayer book, with woodcuts, 1568.
A friend sends me the following incident: "A few years since, some rats made nests in the trees surrounding my house; from thence they jumped on to some flat roofing, and so made their way down a chimney into a room where I kept books.