GNAWING ANIMALS EODENTS 127 



which can hardly be said of the brown rat^ who has 

 all but exterminated him. 



In his ^ Essays on Sport and Natural History ^ 

 (1883) Mr. J. E. Harting devotes a chapter to the 

 black rat. He tells us that this rat is common in 

 the Channel Islands, and that it reigns supreme in 

 the small island lie des Marchands, only a few yards 

 from Sark. 



As the brown rat was not introduced into England 

 until the close of the seventeenth century all earlier 

 mention of rats must refer to the black rat, which is 

 said to have found its way here from the East, about 

 the time of the Norman Conquest. Griraldus Cam- 

 brensis, writing in the twelfth century, records that 

 in the sixth century St. Yvorns cursed the rats in a 

 province of Leinster, probably because they gnawed 

 his books, so that " none were afterwards bred there, 

 or could exist if they were introduced." He also 

 tells of a man in Wales who was persecuted by ^' the 

 larger species of mice commonly called rats.^^ 



The next notice of rats in literature is found in 

 ' Piers Plowman,^ written by William Langland about 

 1362. In the prologue, i, 146, et seq., Langland tells 

 the old fable of the rats and mice trying to hang a 

 bell round the cat's neck, or attempting to bell the 

 cat, to illustrate the struggle between John of Gaunt 

 and the people. The rats represent the chief bur- 

 gesses or more influential people, the mice those of less 

 importance, and the cat is John of Gaunt. The people 

 loved the young Prince Richard for the sake of his 

 father Edward, the Black Prince, and were jealous lest 

 John of Gaunt, his uncle, should assume kingly power. 



