The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 137 
minister’s glebe at Selkirk, about the year 1776 or 1777, where 
they were found burrowing in the earth, a propensity which 
occasioned considerable alarm, lest they should undermine 
houses. They seemed to follow the courses of waters and 
rivulets, and, passing from Selkirk, they were next heard of 
in the mill of Traquair; from thence, following up the Tweed, 
they appeared in the mills of Peebles; then entering by Lyne 
Water, they arrived at Flemington-mill, in this parish; and 
coming up the Lyne they reached this neighbourhood about 
the year 1791 or 1792.” Neill includes it without remark in 
his Newhall list (1808). 
Mops ratrtrus Z..°) :BLAcK.Rat, 
Prior to the invasion of its haunts by Mus decwmanus, the 
Black Rat infested all our towns and villages, and doubtless 
farm-steadings too. It seems to have been quite unable to 
live in competition with its more vigorous congener; and 
simultaneously with the rapid increase of the one, there took 
place a corresponding decrease of the other—cause and effect 
unquestionably—so that, by the early years of the present 
century, Mus rattus had practically ceased to exist in the 
coast towns, and a few years more sufficed to carry the exter- 
mination to its inland haunts as well. At the present time 
we have no proof of its existence on shore, though it is not 
improbable that a few now and again attempt to establish 
themselves in Leith and other ports, seeing they are known 
to exist in considerable numbers in vessels in the docks. A 
typical example (one of many) captured by a professional rat- 
catcher on board one of the Leith and Hamburg steamers while 
lying in Leith harbour in June 1890, was procured by Mr 
Eagle Clarke for the Edinburgh Museum, and recorded in 
the Scottish Natwralist (1891, p. 36), and I have seen another 
specimen, also taken on a Leith steamer, still more recently. 
Mr Thomas Hope, taxidermist, George Street, tells me that 
some nine or ten years ago, one, which had been captured in 
an Edinburgh skinnery, was brought to him for preservation. 
If his identification, which I have no reason to doubt, was 
correct, this is the last Edinburgh Jus rattus I have been 
able to trace. 
