WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



names is that once there were no brown 

 rats in England; they came here on ships, 

 some people said on the ship that brought 

 over George i. (but that is almost certainly 

 not true, for the brown rats must have 

 arrived before that), and so they called them 

 Hanoverian rats. Other persons said that they 

 came from Norway, so they named thena the 

 Norwegian rats. And yet others noticing the 

 colour, and comparing them with the rats which 

 were common before the brown rats came, 

 called them either ' grey rats ' or ' brown rats.' 

 This was by contrast with the pretty little rat, 

 generally black in colour, which was our common 

 rat in the days before the brown rat turned up in 

 this country. In the first place there were no 

 rats here at all ! What a pity they ever came ! 

 Previous to the time of the Crusaders there 

 were no rats of any kind to run about our 

 houses and buildings and raid our stores, 

 gardens, and poultry-houses. They are not 

 mentioned in old writings, their bones are not 

 among the rubbish where other bones are 

 found in old buildings, and in the Welsh 

 language there is not even a word for rat, — 

 when the Welsh wish to speak of a rat they use 

 words the equivalent of ' French ' or ' foreign 

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