338 A memoir on the Rats and Mice of India. [No. 4, 
Afghanstan, where, according to Capt. 'T. Hutton, it would seem to 
be unknown in Kandahar (J. A. S. XV. 140). According to Mr. 
F. T. Buckland, “it made its appearance in Paris about the middle 
of the eighteenth century, and in England not many years earlier. 
It is now agreed by most naturalists,” remarks this author, “that it 
is a native of India and Persia; that it spread onwards into Eu- 
ropean Russia, and was thence transferred by merchant-ships to Eng- 
land and elsewhere.” (Curiosities of Natural History, 5th Edit. 
p- 62.) 
If an indigenous ixhabitant of India, it would undoubtedly be 
more generally diffused over this, if not also the neighbouring coun- 
tries. I suspect that the trans-Baikalian region of KH. Asia has at least 
as good a claim to the discredit of originating the abominable Brown 
Rat asany other. Mus pzcumanus is included in the list of Mamma- 
lia inhabiting the Amur territories by Mr. H. G. Ravenstein, in his 
‘Russians on the Amur,’ &c., (1861), p. 316; and again, at p. 323, 
“Tt is owing to the rapacity of the Mus pecumanus that the Tun- 
guzians build their store-house on four poles, to keep the contents 
beyond its reach ; and among the Goldi the Manchus are nicknamed 
‘Sungari,’ 7. e. Fats, on account of the rapacity with which they 
exact tribute.” Whatever the extremes of temperature and climate, 
Mus DECUMANUS contrives to find itself a home, and to increase and 
multiply about human abodes and granaries, to the serious detriment 
of not quite all-subduing man! Calcutta specimens are undistinguish- 
able from British ; and I observe no marked difference in one receiv- 
ed from Amoy, except that it is in finer pelage and rather brighter 
coloured than usual. 
M. pecomanotess, Temminck (nec Hodgson), is given in Dr, 
Horsfield’s Catalogue of the Mammalia in the India House Museum: 
“two specimens, from Bengal, presented by Gen. T. Hardwicke.” 
I have seen no description. Surely not JL. nemoralis, nobis ? 
Mus narrvs, L. (Buffon, H. WV. VII. 278, t. 36.) ‘The European 
Black Rat I have only seen from vessels in the port of Calcutta, which 
differs in no respect from others received from France. Mr. Elliot,in his 
‘ Catalogue of Mammalia in the Southern Mahratta country’ notes it as 
“rare,” and Mr. Layard includes it from Ceylon, where Dr. Kelaart ob- 
tained one individual in a house, in Trincomali, remarking that he had 
