236 



FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



swim the Volga, and we soon learned what awaited Europe. Follow- 

 ing canals and rivers, the brown rats reached villages and towns, 

 entered, in spite of men and cats, the lower stories of our dwellings, 

 filled vaults and cellars, ascended gradually to the garrets, ousted its 

 relative after long and inexorable warfare, made itself master in our 

 own houses, and showed us in a thousand ways what a rat could 



Fig. 35. A Wild Duck defending her Brood from a Brow 



do. It possessed and exercised all the vices of its family, mocked 

 at all our attempts to drive it away, and remained in possession of 

 the field, which, up till now, we have tried to wrest from it with 

 dogs and cats, by traps and snares, poison and shooting. Almost at 

 the same time as it swam over the Volga, it reached Europe by an- 

 other route, coming from the East Indies to England on board ship. 

 Then began its world-wanderings. In East Prussia it appeared as 

 early as 1750, in Paris three years later, Central Germany was con- 



