I. THE RACES OF INDIAN RATS. 



AN ENQUIRY SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE INVESTIGATION 



OF PLAGUE, AND DEALING WITH THE ORIGIN OF 



RACES FROM SPORTS. 



By R. E. Lloyd, M.B., D.Sc. {Lond.), Capi., I. M.S., Acting 



Professor of Biology, Medical College, Calcutta, formerly 



Surgeon Naturalist, Marine Survey of India. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The collection on which Captain Lloyd's researches are based 

 consists almost entirely of specimens sent to the Museum by medical 

 and sanitary officers in India and Burma as a result of an appeal 

 circulated by the Government of India in 1907. The history of 

 this appeal is as follows : — At the time that Dr. W. C, Hossack 

 was engaged on the work embodied in his account of the rats of 

 Calcutta, considerable discussion arose as to the species of rats which 

 lived in association w^th man in different parts of the country. As 

 the matter was an interesting one from every point of view, I 

 wrote to the Board of Scientific Advice, asking the Board to bring 

 to the notice of Government the importance of conducting a con- 

 certed survey of the rats of India. The Board forwarded my 

 recommendations, with the result that the circular to which Cap- 

 tain Lloyd refers at the beginning of his paper was issued. Dr 

 Hossack, however, found himself unable to continue his work on 

 rats owing to the stress of other duties, and the Trustees of the 

 Indian Museum failed in their attempt to secure the services of an 

 expert mammalologist from Europe to deal with the collection of 

 which the specimens presented to the Museum b}' Dr. Hossack 

 formed the nucleus. The Trustees then approached the medical 

 authorities with the suggestion that Captain Lloyd should be 

 put on special dut}' in the Museum for this purpose. The medi- 

 cal authorities agreed, and Captain Lloyd's term of special duty, 

 at first six months, was later extended to a year and then to 

 eighteen months. 



I venture to think that the Trustees" failure to secure the 

 services of a specialist from Europe was not altogether a misfortune, 

 although I was responsible for the suggestion in the first instance. 

 Few zoologists would deny that an expert mammalologist wdth 

 2,000 rats before him, and only a year in which to work them 

 out, would have been justified in devoting the whole of that time 

 to a study of taxonomic minutiae. A resident naturalist was, 



