THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 607 
“Common Rat,” the name adopted here as being free from ambiguity 
(see p. 579). 
Sex names :—/uck and doe ; dog and dztch (occasionally); and doar 
and sow (amongst fanciers). 
Local names :—‘“ Ratten” or “rotten” of parts of Yorkshire and 
Scotland (E. R. Alston).t 
Distribution and history:—The Common Rat is undoubtedly an 
Asiatic species, and has found its way to Europe only within the last 
two centuries. What precise part of Asia is to be regarded as its 
original home, has been the subject of considerable controversy. 
Pallas did not find it in Siberia, and Gmelin erroneously” claimed to 
have discovered it, inhabiting burrows in the fields in considerable 
numbers in Persia. Pennant, reflecting on these facts, and having 
heard of the Indian Bandicoots and their habits, conjectured that it 
had been brought from Persia and the East Indies to Western Europe 
by shipping. This view was maintained by many subsequent writers, 
and in 1852 Frank Buckland (Curiosities Nat. Hist, i., 62) said :—“ It 
is now agreed by most naturalists that it is a native of India and 
Persia; that it spread onwards into European Russia, and was thence 
transferred by merchant ships to England and elsewhere.” 
When, however, the mammals of India came to receive serious 
attention it soon became evident that this species was not a native of 
that country, it being met with only in the neighbourhood of certain 
ports; and Blyth was led to “suspect that the Trans-Baikalian region 
of East Asia had at least as good a claim to the dzscredit of originating 
the abominable brown rat as any other.” Blanford, finding the species 
to be at present unknown in Persia, and to occur in India only along 
the coast and navigable rivers, arrived at much the same conclusion ; 
he thought that Chinese Mongolia might with more likelihood be 
looked upon as its centre of dispersal. In China several short-tailed 
species, of smaller size but more or less closely resembling worvegicus in 
colour, occur. Thomas, receiving what purported to be a specimen of 
one of these, viz., #. humz/iatus, Milne-Edwardes, was led to suggest this 
species as the possible wild stock of norvegicus (Proc. Zool. Soc., 1898, 
772); this specimen had, however, been incorrectly determined in Paris, 
and was in fact zorvegzcus, which is not uncommon in many parts of 
China (Bonhote, Proc. czt., 1905, 393). 
Kastchenko (Aun. Mus. Zool. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersb., xvii., 
1912, 370) has described a wild form, his 4. norvegicus primarius, 
inhabiting the region west of Lake Baikal, thus confirming Blyth’s 
1 “When I was a boy, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, it was considered no mean 
feat to be able to say rapidly and correctly the words, ‘A rotten loupit o’er a rope ; 
loup, rotten, loup, and go on repeating them” (W. Evans, MS.). 
* The rats found by Gmelin were probably “ wild-coloured ” forms of £. ra¢tus. 
