136 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
The following are a few measurements taken from examples 
captured in January and March :— 
Length of head and body, | 3°2 in. | 3°25 in.| 3°25 in.) 3°2 in. | 3°5 in. 
Length of head alone, . 1h Ss Be 1d he eee 
Length of tail, ; P 1°45,, 4.1°5 ins | 4°45 in.) 16, eee 
Mus pEcuMANUS Pall. Brown Rat. 
The Brown Rat 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 liv- 
ing 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 Kast 
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 during December and January last). 
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 footing 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 
Russian, or Norwegian rat, which a good many years ago 
invaded Tweeddale, to the total extermination of the former 
black rat inhabitants. Their first appearance was in the 
1 «* Primum delatus, ut fertur, in Scotia, navibus e Norvegia. Ubicunque 
sedes suas-figit, Murem Ratiwm penitus fugat”’ (Mammalia Scotica, p. 498), 
