BROWN RAT 73 



BROWN RAT. 



MUS DECUMANUS Pall. 



The Brown Eat is only too well known wherever human 

 habitations and industries have been established, finding a 

 congenial home alike in town and country. It seems to 

 be living more in the open fields now than formerly, 

 and at times it increases to such an extent in certain 

 localities as to become a serious agricultural pest, as has 

 recently happened in East Lothian and the adjacent parts 

 of Midlothian, where meetings of the farmers have been 

 held to discuss the situation, and if possible devise a remedy 

 (see numerous communications in the "Scotsman" durinar 

 December and January 1890-91). 



The first appearance of the Brown Rat among us does not 

 seem to have been placed on record, but we may safely 

 assume that the ports of the Firth of Forth were among the 

 earliest localities in which the immigrants obtained a footinar in 

 Scotland ; and we shall probably not be far wrong in referring 

 the event to about the middle of the eighteenth century. By 

 the beginning of the present century it was apparently only 

 too common almost everywhere. 



Walker, writing probably between 1764 and 1774, says of 

 it, " First brought, as is reported, into Scotland in ships from 

 Norway. Wherever it set up its abode, it entirely put to 

 flight the Mus rattus."'^ The following interesting account of 

 its progress from Selkirk to the upper valley of the Tweed, as 

 narrated in the " New Statistical Account " of the parish of 

 Newlands (Peeblesshire, 1834, p. 137), is worth repeating 

 " Zoology : — Under this head may be noticed the brown, or 



^ " Primum delatus, ut fertur, in Scotia, navibus e Norvegia. Ubicunque 

 sedes suas figit, Murem RcUtum penitus fugat" (Mammalia Scotica, p. 498). 



