STOWAWAYS ON SHIPS 429 



the north, over the vast plains of Russia. This great migra- 

 tion speedily made Russia, especially the region of the Baltic 

 ports, a centre of dispersal whence shipping carried the new- 

 comers to all parts of Europe. While this migration was 

 populating central Europe, and even before it had begun, 

 the Brown Rat, occasionally carried to seaports with cargoes 

 from southern Russia, was making here and there experi- 

 mental colonies on new coasts. 



To this latter mode of dispersal it is supposed that Britain 

 owed its first Brown Rats, the date of their arrival being 

 generally set down as 1728 or 1729. When it first ap- 

 peared in Scotland is uncertain, but the importance of the 

 trade carried on in the eighteenth century between our great 

 seaports and the countries of the Continent, suggests that the 

 Brown Rat as an immigrant cannot have lagged much behind 

 its English brethren. Probably it was well established before 

 the middle of the eighteenth century. At any rate, Professor 

 John Walker, whose essay on Mammalia Scotica, published 

 in 1808, was probably written between 1764 and 1774*, 

 speaks of it in a way which would suggest that it was common 

 and well established when he wrote. 



Further, Walker actually describes the arrival and sub- 

 sequent establishment of the Brown Rat in the district of 

 the Solway, some twenty years before he wrote, that is to 

 say between 1744 and 1754. His remarks are well worth 

 translation and reproduction. Says he, in effect, of his 

 " Mus fossor..JV\\e Norway Rat: ...First brought, as they 

 say, to Scotland in ships from Norway." 



Wheresoever it pitches its abode, it pitches out the Black Ratten utterly. 



The Black Ratten, the Water Ratten and the Norway Rat were previously 

 entirely unknown in Annan [a district on the Solway in Dumfriesshire]. 

 Because, according to tradition, these animals were unable to live in that 

 district. For the which reason, the soil of Annan, was carried to districts 

 afar off, with great care, and with none the less folly, for the ruination of 

 Rats. However about twenty years agone, the Norway Rat was cast on 



1 The late Mr Barrett-Hamilton and Mr Hinton, in their fine History 

 of British Mammals (1916, p. 609), err in saying that Walker attributed 

 the arrival of the Brown Rat to the period between 1764 and 1774 this 

 is apparently a misinterpretation of the correct statement made by Mr Evans 

 in his Mammalia of the Forth, 1892, p. 73. None of these authors, however, 

 has referred to the actual instance of the establishment of the Brown Rat 

 mentioned by Walker, and translated above. 



