42 



OCCURKENCE OF THE BLACK RAT (MUS RATTUS) 

 AT MIDDLESBROUGH. 



By T. Ashton Lofthouse. 



Some few months ago at one of the Winter Meetings held by 

 the Club, a case of Black Rats [Mus rattus] was exhibited, the 

 specimens having been taken at Stockton-on-Tees, where the 

 species seems to occur frequently in the old warehouses and 

 buildings in the vicinity of the river Tees. The above exhibit 

 led to one of our members remarking to me ( when seeing him some 

 little time after the meeting at his Printing Works, at Middles- 

 brough), that his workmen had been trapping rats for some time, 

 and be, noticing they were very dark coloured, it occurred to him 

 that they might be the Black Rat. I asked him to send me the 

 next one that was trapped, the result being that I received a 

 specimen on November 11th, 1903, which proved to be, as he 

 surmised, a specimen of the Black Rat (Mus rattus). This is 

 a rather interesting addition to our Fauna, especially seeing that 

 Middlesbrough is altogether a modern town, and has practically 

 none of the old warehouses and buildings which this species is 

 said to frequent, our oldest buildings, with one or two exceptions, 

 only dating back a matter of 60 or 70 years. A local taxidermist 

 informs me that on two occasions within the past two years he 

 has had Middlesbrough specimens. It is possibly a species that 

 is very much overlooked, and is probably of very much commoner 

 occurrence than is generally credited. In regard to this species it 

 states in Bell's British Quadrupeds that "The old English or Black 

 Rat, which is now becoming a rare animal in this country, was, 

 previously to the introduction of its more powerful congener and 

 persecutor, the Brown Rat, as numerous and as extensively 

 distributed as that species has since become." 



Since the above paper was written I have seen specimens of 

 the Black Rat that have been taken at Sir Eaylton Dixon & Go's., 

 Shipyard, Middlesbrough, recently, where I understand it is fairly 

 common. 



