620 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 205 



1778. Mus decumanus Pallas, Novae species quadrupedum e glirum or- 



dine, . . . , p. 91. 

 1932. Rattus norvegicus Cabrera, Trab. Mus. Nac. Cien. Nat., Madrid, ser. 



zool., No. 57, p. 264, Dec. 30, 1932. 

 Type Locality. — England. 52 Range. — Introduced and widely established 

 throughout North America. 



Rattus rattus rattus (Linnaeus) * (black rat) 



1758. [Mus] rattus Linnaeus, Systema naturae, ed. 10, vol. 1, p. 61. (Accord- 

 ing to Mohr, Biol. Zentralblatt, vol. 67, Nos. 7-8, pp. 371-372, 1948, "what 

 Linne described as Mus rattus was not the black house rat, but the white- 

 bellied, brown-grey roof rat.") 

 1916. Rattus rattus Hollister, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, vol. 29, p. 126, 



June 6, 1916. 

 Type Locality. — Uppsala, Sweden. Range. — Introduced and formerly common 

 in the northeastern United States, but now generally replaced by Rattus 

 norvegicus. Primarily a house rat (Schwarz, Amer. Journ. Trop. Med., vol. 22, 

 No. 5, p. 577, September 1942). 



Rattus rattus alexaudrinus (£,. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire) * (gray-bellied rat) 

 1803. Mus alexaudrinus E. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, Catalogue des mammiferes 

 du Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, p. 192. (Considered by 

 Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, Checklist of Palaearctic and Indian mammals 

 1758 to 1946, Publ. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), p. 581, Nov. 19, 1951, to be 

 "rather a colour phase or 'form' of the typical race than a subspecies as 

 usually understood.") 

 1918. R[attus] rattus alexaudrinus Hinton, Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc, 

 vol. 26, No. 1, p. 63, Dec. 20, 1918. — Schwarz, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 1934, pt. 4, p. 723, Jan. 14, 1935. 

 Type Locality. — Alexandria, Egypt. Range. — Introduced and widely estab- 

 lished in the southern United States, and thence southward. Primarily a house 

 rat. 



52 Berkenhout, who lived in London and therefore must have known the rodent at first 

 hand, naturally thought, after reading Klein's account of "Glis norvagicus [sic], Mures 

 ex Norvegia" (Quadrupedum Dispositio brevisque Historia Naturalis, 1751, p 56), that the 

 British and Irish brown rat came to England and Ireland from Norway. Bechstein, 20 years 

 later (Gemeinniitzige Naturgeschichte Deutschlands nach alien drey Reichen, vol. 1, p, 436, 

 1789) , supposed that the animal arrived in Europe on ships engaged in the East Indian 

 trade. According to Brants (Het Geslecht der Muizen door Linnaeus opgesteld. . . . , 

 pp. 112-113, 1827), who wrote about 40 years after Bechstein, this rat was unknown in 

 western Europe before the year 1750, at about which date it arrived from Persia and 

 southeastern Asia "in ongemeene schoolen." 



For detailed accounts of the early history of house-inhabiting murines in Europe see Bar- 

 rett-Hamilton and Hinton, A History of British mammals, pt. 18, pp. 579-587, February 

 1916 (Rattus rattus) ; and pt. 19, pp. 607-611 and 635-636, September 1916 (Rattus norve- 

 gicus and Mus musculus) . For accounts of their early history in North America see Miller, 

 Bull. New York State Mus., Nat. Hist., Albany, vol. 6, No. 69, pp. 314-315, October 1899; 

 Lantz, U. S. Biol. Survey Bull. 32, May 29, 1909; Lantz, U. S. Dept. Agr., Yearbook 1917, 

 pp. 1-23, Oct. 17, 1917; Nelson. Nat. Geogr. Mag., vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 1-33, figs. 20, July 

 1917; and Silver, U. S. Dept. Agr. Farmers' Bull. 1302, April 1923. 



