304 



AUTUMN AND WINTER 



clings more closely to dwellings, and has not the capacity of 

 the brown rat for getting a living in country as well as town. 

 It is by no means almost extinct, as is sometimes thought. 

 It is fairly common in a good many seaports, where its 

 numbers are no doubt reinforced from time to time by 



BLACK RAT 



recruits brought by vessels from the Levant and the Far 

 East, which are its headquarters. It also still holds its own 

 in a few remote spots where the brown rat does not seem yet 

 to have succeeded in ousting it. It scarcely deserves the 

 sympathy sometimes lavished on it as a respectable old 

 British animal crowded out of existence by immigrant aliens ; 

 for it is undoubtedly an alien itself, which made its way to 

 Britain a few centuries before its successor and oppressor. 

 Even its more modest greed and temperate rapacity are to a 



