In response to an appeal for information on rats due to plague in Bombay, he wrote an article for "The Times of India" (19 July 1899), in which he threw a flood of light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian rat as found in town and country. He wrote that "Mus rattus", the old English black rat, which is the common house rat of India outside the large seaports, "has become, through centuries of contact with the Indian people, a domestic animal like the cat in Britain".