VERMIN 189 



power of ensuring a wholesale campaign 

 against such pestilent vermin. 



It is not generally known that no rat 

 is a true native of this country ; the old 

 English or black rat, now practically ex- 

 tinct, is first recorded in the twelfth 

 century, while the brown rat, probably hail- 

 ing from Western Mongolia, crossed the 

 Volga about the close of the seventeenth 

 century, spreading with amazing rapidity 

 over the whole continent of Europe, and 

 was firmly established in these islands 

 fifty years later. 



Like most other undesirable aliens, he 

 seems to have come to stay ; he quickly 

 polished off the black rat whom he found 

 in possession, and is now a chronic plague 

 in most of our eastern counties and an 

 abundant evil everywhere. 



Guilty on all counts is, then, the verdict 

 on the rat. 



The pine marten and the polecat 

 sweetmart and foumart of local phraseo- 

 logy now only exist in such scanty 

 numbers that the presence of an odd 



