WILD CREATURES OF GARDEN AND HEDGEROW 



to get into the house, in which rats had never 

 appeared before, and made their way from top 

 to bottom before I was able to catch them 

 again. Of course, the brown rat can also have 

 and spread the plague by means of its fleas, but 

 owing to its habits it is not nearly such a 

 danger as the older kind used to be. 



It is really rather a mistake to call the 

 common rat the brown rat, though this is the 

 name generally used, for it is sometimes black 

 in colour, nor is the name black rat a good one 

 for the other kind, as ' black ' rats are very 

 often fawn in colour. Indeed none of the 

 everyday names of these rats are descriptive, 

 for the black rat, though older in England 

 than the brown, does not, considering that it 

 was a foreigner that came here in historical 

 times, deservfe to be called the Old English rat. 

 Neither was the brown rat a native of Norway 

 or Hanover, so what is the use of calUng it the 

 Norwegian or Hanoverian rat ? 



Whatever their colouring, the two kinds can 

 generally be told apart in the following way : 

 in the case of the brown rat the tail is not quite 

 so long as its head and body, and in the black 

 rat it is considerably longer. The ears of the 

 black rat are large in proportion to its head ; 

 188 



