426 ANIMALS INTRODUCED UNAWARES 



For the earliest reference I know to the presence of the 

 Black Rat in Scotland I am indebted to Mr A. O. Curie, 

 and quote it from the sixteenth century manuscript of 

 the Moray Papers by permission of the Right Hon. the 

 Earl of Moray. The writer quaintly described the death 

 and burial of an old horse, which " made his testament on ye 

 castell hill and put debait amangs ye doggis and retrings 1 ." 

 Yet early Scottish references are few and are mostly 

 confined, not to recording the presence of Rats, but to 

 marvelling at their absence from certain areas a clear 

 indication of their general distribution and abundance. 

 Thus Bishop Leslie in 15 78 recorded " a wondir, the rattoun 

 lyues not in Buquhane," or Buchan, a district in eastern 

 Aberdeenshire: "In this cuntrey na Rattoune is bred, or, 

 brocht in frome ony vthir place, thair may lyue [live]." In 

 the seventeenth century, 1630 to be exact, a similar reference 

 to Sutherland, contains a definite statement of the means by 

 which the Rats were introduced : 



There is not a ratt in Sutherland, and if they doe come thither in shipps 

 from other pairts (which often happeneth) they die presentlie, how soone 

 they doe smell of the aire of that cuntrey. But they are in Catteynes 

 [Caithness], the next adjacent province, divyded onlie by a little strype or 

 brook from Sutherland. 



At the same period, a like tradition held regarding 

 Ross-shire, much to the mystification of Richard Franck, an 

 ex-Cromwellian trooper, when in 1656, his journey ings in 

 Scotland brought him to the northern counties. For, said 

 he, 



The inhabitants will flatter you with an absurd opinion that the earth in 

 Ross hath an antipathy against rats as the Irish oak has against the spider. 

 And this, curiosity if you please to examine you may, for the natives do : 

 but had they asserted there were no mice in Ross, every tongue had con- 

 tradicted them. Now mice and rats are cousin-german, everybody knows 

 that knows anything, and for the most part keep house together. But what 

 difference has hapned amongst them here as to make such a find in this 

 country of Ross that the rats of Ross should relinquish their countrey and 

 give possession wholly to the mice ; This is a mystery that I understand 

 not. 



He added that 



to the best of my observation, I never saw a rat ; nor do I remember of 

 any one that was with me ever did ; but for mice, I declare, so great is 

 their plenty that were they a commodity, Scotland might boast on't. 



1 retrings I take to be " rotten s,'' rats. 



