430 ANIMALS INTRODUCED UNAWARES 



shore from ships driven to the mouth of the river Annan, and now is 

 scattered through almost the whole region of Annan. But the Black and 

 the Water Rattens have not yet put in an appearance in Annan, a district 

 encompassed as with ramparts, by the ocean, by alpine regions and by 

 deep rivers. 



From Walker's actual statement we learn that the Brown 

 Rat appeared in Annan about 1 750. This case he mentioned 

 for a special purpose to contrast it with the traditional ab- 

 sence of Rats from the district concerned; but that this was 

 not the earliest establishment known to him is clear from 

 the remark in which he assigns the first coming of the Rat 

 from Norway to an earlier period, to which tradition alone 

 bore witness. On these grounds it is legitimate to attribute 

 the first introduction of the Brown Rat to Scotland to a 

 period previous to the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 perhaps in the region of the thirties. 



At first the Brown Rat settled mainly in the seaports 

 and seaboard towns, where it found garbage in plenty for 

 its sustenance. Soon its colonies, outpacing the food -supply, 

 overflowed into the country, so that by the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century, it had obtained a hold in most districts. 

 The New Statistical Account of the Peeblesshire parish 

 of Newlands gives an interesting description of the coloniza- 

 tion of that part of Tweedside. This I quote to illustrate 

 the influence of peopled valleys in determining the direction 

 of the Rat's dispersal : 



The brown or Russian or Norwegian rat... a good many years ago invaded 

 Tweeddale, to the total extermination of the former black rat inhabitants. 

 Their first appearance was in the minister's glebe at Selkirk, about the year 

 1776 or 1777, where they were found burrowing in the earth, a propensity 

 which occasioned considerable alarm, lest they should undermine nouses. 

 They seemed to follow the courses of waters and rivulets, and, passing from 

 Selkirk, they were next heard of in the mill of Traquair; from thence, 

 following up the Tweed, they appeared in the mills of Peebles ; then entering 

 by Lyne Water, they arrived at Flemington Mill, in this parish; and coming 

 up the Lyne, they reached this neighbourhood about the year 1791 or 1792. 



Nowadays there are few places which have escaped its 

 detested presence, and the Brown Rat has become one of 

 the mostabundant andmost destructive members of our fauna. 

 In many areas the plague of Rats has become a menace to 

 agriculture, so that we find the farmers in East Lothian 

 clubbing together in 1909, and engaging four ratcatchers to 



