THE BLACK OR SHIP RAT 583 
major mole corporis mustele minime ; pilis est subnigris ; cauda procera, 
etc.” In 1551, Gesner (De Quadrupedibus, 1, 829) described it as 
follows: “colore subniger, vel fuscus, qui ventrem versus adtlutior est,” 
and in the rare copies in which his figure is coloured he depicts a rat 
of intense dusky hue. 
Beyond the fact that it was later than in France or Britain, and that 
it must have been before the sixteenth century, nothing is known of 
the date of the introduction of this species to Germany. In Denmark, 
according to Winge, it did not appear until late medieval times or even 
later. The first mention of it in Norway, according to Collett, was by 
P. Clauss6n, who stated, in 1599, that it was brought to that country 
by ships, and that it subsequently acquired there an extensive distribu- 
tion, although only along the coast and in the market-towns; in 1613 
the same writer added that it had been carried by shipping to the 
country north of Trondhjemfjord, but that it did not survive in that 
region long. 
The Black Rat quickly multiplied in Europe and soon became a 
most formidable pest. War was waged against it with poison as early 
as the fourteenth century (see p. 580 above); a rat-trap is spoken of in 
the accounts of the churchwardens of St Michael’s, Cornhill, London, for 
the year 1469; Shakespeare alluded to the rat-catcher! in 1592 (Rowzeo 
and Jultet, Act iii., sc. 1, 78) ; and doubtless most of the ordinary methods 
of destroying rats were familiar at an early date. So serious were the 
ravages of this species in some places, and so fruitless were the attempts 
made to exterminate it, that on various occasions appeals were made to 
the spiritual powers for protection. Thus Blasius mentions that at 
Nordhausen the people held a day of prayer on its account; while in 
the beginning of the fifteenth century the Bishop of Autun formally 
placed the animal under a curse. 
Early in the eighteenth century the invasion of Europe by the 
Brown Rat began; and as this stronger and more fecund rival gained 
ground, the Black Rat waned in numbers, until at length it became 
extinct over a large part of its former domain in temperate Europe. 
This ousting of the Black Rat may have been in part due to a direct 
antipathy between the two species, and partly to the greater voracity 
of the Brown Rat, which perhaps tended to deprive the weaker species 
of provisions. 
Robert Smith, rat-catcher to the Princess Amelia (Zhe Unzversal 
Directory for taking alive and destroying Rats, etc., 1768), describes the 
1 The same personage figured long before in Pzers Plowman, A. v., 165 (1362) as 
“a ratoner.” Pennant (British Zoology, ed. 1776, 101) states that “among other 
officers, his British majesty has a rat-catcher, distinguished by a particular dress, 
scarlet embroidered with yellow worsted, in which are figures of mice destroying 
wheat-sheaves.” 
