THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 609 
called “S6-Rotter” or sea-rats, and in 1776 had become so numerous 
as to be called the “common kind.” According to Svabo,! this species 
was first introduced to the Ferées in 1768 by a ship called The King 
of Prussia; while on a voyage from Norway to Dublin, this vessel 
was wrecked on the coast of Lewis, and the wreck drifted thence to 
Suder6é. The species spread quickly throughout the islands, and was 
called by the inhabitants “the great or new rat,” in contradistinction 
from the “common rat” (vattws) with which they had long been 
familiar. Svabo gives much information, with dates, relating to the 
progress of this species in the Far6es between 1768 and 1781, In 
Sweden it does not seem to have been known before 1790, and the 
earliest mention of it appears to have been made by Thunberg in 
1798. 
In France the species was said by Erxleben to have arrived at 
Paris in 1750, but it was not known to Buffon prior to 1753. It did 
not appear in Switzerland before the beginning of the nineteenth 
century (1809, Schintz, Blasius, and Fatio). In Spain its introduction 
dates from the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth 
century (Cabrera); and in Italy perhaps from the middle of the 
eighteenth century (de Selys; Nickel, Zoo/, Garten, 1874, 155). 
A certain wealth of tradition has gathered around the advent of 
this species in Britain. According to one old legend it first came to 
England from Germany in the very ship which brought William of 
Orange over in 1688 (Charles Waterton’s Essays on Nat. Hist. ser. 1, 
211); and according to another, positively supported by Waterton’s 
father, it accompanied the House of Hanover on its emigration from 
Germany in 1714—hence the name “Hanoverian Rat,” frequently 
bestowed upon this species by the British in the eighteenth century. 
Others, as Smith (Uxzversal Directory, etc.), maintained that it came 
from Norway in timber-laden ships—an impossibility, because the 
species at that time did not exist in Norway. Pennant put the date 
of its introduction to England as about 1728 or 1729, and this date has 
been adopted by Boyd Dawkins, and most other writers, In all 
probability we received our first stock with cargoes from vessels trading 
with Russian ports. 
Its arrival in Scotland dates from the period between 1764 and 
1774, according to Walker (Mammatia Scotica, 498), and it reached 
Selkirkshire between 1770 and 1777; its progress from Selkirk to the 
upper valley of the Tweed, between 1776 and 1792, is narrated in the 
! Svabo’s unpublished MS. reposes in the library of the University of Copen- 
hagen, and was the chief source of the zoological information given by Landt 
(Forsog til en Beskrivelse over Ferverne, Kjébenhayn, 1800). We are greatly 
indebted to Dr Knud Andersen for the loan of his MS. copy of parts of this 
important work, 
