90 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



pense with no enemy to fear in its quasi-domestic 

 state save man, whom it pillaged, and the cat, which 

 the lords of creation had called to their aid against 

 an adversary which had been rendered formidable 

 by its very diminutiveness and timidity. Daring 

 the middle ages, the black rat, coming no one knew 

 from whence, spread itself over Europe and attacked 

 the mouse, who, too feeble to resist his ferocious 

 antagonist, was obliged to share with him his old 

 haunts, only escaping complete destruction by re- 

 tiring within his narrow galleries, whither the enemy 

 could not pursue him. At the beginning of the last 

 century, the Norway, or brown rat, brought by mer- 

 chant vessels from India, appeared in Europe, and at 

 once began to wage an exterminating war against 

 the black rat. Its greater strength, ferocity, and 

 fecundity enabled it rapidly to gain ground. This 

 rat first appeared in England in 1730; twenty years 

 later it was observed in France ; but at the period 

 when BufFon wrote his immortal work, it was only 

 met with in the environs of Paris, and had not yet 

 penetrated to the city. At the present day it is the 

 only rat met with in the capital and in the greater 

 part of the provinces. Its partiality for the water 

 and the readiness with which it swims have enabled 

 it to follow the courses of rivers, and by ascending 

 the smallest affluents it has contrived to diffuse itself 

 over the whole country. It has driven the black 

 rat before it, exterminating it in many of our pro- 

 vinces, and forcing it to take refuge in mills, or 

 isolated farms. At Chausey I could not see a single 

 specimen of the black rat, whilst its formidable 



