582 MURIDAZ—EPIMYS 
The Irish practice of satirising or rhyming rats (and other animals) 
to death was frequently mentioned in the seventeenth century, starting, 
perhaps, with Scott’s Dscoverie of Witchcraft (1584). Thus Shakespeare 
made Rosalind say, in As You Lzke Jt, Act iii, sc. 2: “I was never 
so be-rhimed that I can remember since Pythagoras’s time, when I 
was an Irish rat” ; and the same idea is found in Ben Jonson’s Poetaster 
(address to the reader; 1601): “Rhime them to death as they do 
Irish Rats”; in the same author’s Szap/e of News (1625); in Randolph’s 
Jealous Lovers (1646); Flecknoe’s Characters (1665); and doubtless 
numerous other references could be given. 
E. rvattus is undoubtedly of Eastern origin. There is no clear 
evidence of its presence in Europe during the historic period prior 
to the Crusades (1095, 1147, and 1191); on the other hand, as shown 
above, the species was firmly established in western Europe shortly after 
those events, and there can be little doubt that it was imported by 
the navies of the Crusaders. De I’Isle’s researches led him to believe 
that the Alexandrine! Rat was the parent source of the European 
Black Rat. He supposed that in the seventh century the “ Alexandrine 
Rat” was still living a free life on the deserts of Arabia, because if it 
had been parasitic on man in the Near East at that time the torrent 
of Arab invasion would have brought it to Europe, whereas it did not 
appear in Europe until three or four centuries later. Subsequently it 
acquired parasitic habits, and it spread through Palestine, Egypt, and 
North Africa. From the Levant the ships of the Crusaders carried 
it to the northern shores of the Mediterranean, where it received a 
variety of names. The modern Greeks called it rovtixos, the Venetians 
pantegana, in each case in allusion to its arrival by sea; the Genoese 
named it Zofo (a modification of Za/pa), which is still used in Italy; 
the Romans called it Sovco (from Sorex); finally, in Provence, where 
the word vata was used as the name of the House Mouse, it received 
the name ra¢, and this Provencal name, as the animal spread into the 
cities of other Western peoples, followed it into all the languages of 
western Europe. 
According to de I’Isle, the pioneer rats must have had brown backs 
and light bellies, and in.Italy and Iberia this colour has been retained. 
Northwards of the Mediterranean region the brown pelage was changed, 
partly by climatic influences (as supposed by de I’Isle) and partly 
because of alimentary changes (according to Fatio), into a black one. 
This change cannot have taken longer than three centuries, or more 
than 900 generations of rats, to effect,? for Georgius Agricola (De 
Animant. subterran., 1530, ed. 1657, 485) described the rat as “ Mus 
1 De VIsle meant the form called 2. ~ frugivorus below ; see p. 595, footnote 1. 
2 If, as seems probable, the race arose as a Mendelian mutation (see under 
Geographical variation), the change was probably effected in a much shorter period. 

