212 THE RAT. 
firmly, that it did accompany the House of Hanover 
in its emigration from Germany to England. Be 
this as it may, it is certain that the stranger rat has 
now punished us severely for more than a century 
and a quarter. Its rapacity knows no bounds, while 
its increase is prodigious beyond all belief. But the 
most singular part of its history is, that it has 
nearly worried every individual of the original rat 
of Great Britain. So scarce have these last-men- 
tioned animals become, that in all my life I have 
never seen but one single solitary specimen: it was 
sent, some few years ago, to Nostell Priory, in a 
cage, from Bristol; and I received an invitation 
from Mr. Arthur Strickland, who was on a visit 
there, to go and see it. Whilst I was looking at 
the little native prisoner in its cage, I could not 
help exclaiming,—“ Poor injured Briton! hard, 
indeed, has been the fate of thy family! in another 
generation, at farthest, it will probably sink down 
to the dust for ever ! ” : 
Vain would be an attempt to trace the progress 
of the stranger rat through England’s wide domain, 
as the old people now alive can tell nothing of 
its coming amongst them. No part of the country 
is free from its baneful presence: the fold and the 
field, the street and the stable, the ground and the 
garret, all bear undoubted testimony to its ubiquity 
and to its. forbidding habits. After dining on 
carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage 
to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where, 
like Celzeno of old, “vestigia foeda relinquit.” We 
may now consider it saddled upon us for. ever. 
