THE BLACK OR SHIP RAT 583 



tnajor mole corporis mustelce minima ; pilis est subnigris ; cauda procera, 

 etc." In 1 55 1, Gesner {De Quadrupedibus, i, 829) described it as 

 follows : " colore subniger, vel fuscus, qui ventrem versus dilutior est" 

 and in the rare copies in which his figure is coloured he depicts a rat 

 of intense dusky hue. 



Beyond the fact that it was later than in France or Britain, and that 

 it must have been before the sixteenth century, nothing is known of 

 the date of the introduction of this species to Germany. In Denmark, 

 according to Winge, it did not appear until late mediaeval times or even 

 later. The first mention of it in Norway, according to CoUett, was by 

 P. Clausson, who stated, in 1599, that it was brought to that country 

 by ships, and that it subsequently acquired there an extensive distribu- 

 tion, although only along the coast and in the market-towns; in 161 3 

 the same writer added that it had been carried by shipping to the 

 country north of Trondhjemfjord, but that it did not survive in that 

 region long. 



The Black Rat quickly multiplied in Europe and soon became a 

 most formidable pest. War was waged against it with poison as early 

 as the fourteenth century (see p. 580 above) ; a rat-trap is spoken of in 

 the accounts of the churchwardens of St Michael's, Cornhill, London, for 

 the year 1469 ; Shakespeare alluded to the rat-catcher ^ in 1592 {Romeo 

 and Juliet, Act iii., sc. i, 78) ; and doubtless most of the ordinary methods 

 of destroying rats were familiar at an early date. So serious were the 

 ravages of this species in some places, and so fruitless were the attempts 

 made to exterminate it, that on various occasiorfs appeals were made to 

 the spiritual powers for protection. Thus Blasius mentions that at 

 Nordhausen the people held a day of prayer on its account ; while in 

 the beginning of the fifteenth century the Bishop of Autun formally 

 placed the animal under a curse. 



Early in the eighteenth century the invasion of Europe by the 

 Brown Rat began ; and as this stronger and more fecund rival gained 

 ground, the Black Rat waned in numbers, until at length it became 

 extinct over a large part of its former domain in temperate Europe. 

 This ousting of the Black Rat may have been in part due to a direct 

 antipathy between the two species, and partly to the greater voracity 

 of the Brown Rat, which perhaps tended to deprive the weaker species 

 of provisions. 



Robert Smith, rat-catcher to the Princess Amelia (The Universal 

 Directory for taking alive and destroying Rats, etc., 1768), describes the 



1 The same personage figured long before in Piers Plowman, A. v., 165 (1362) as 

 "a raioner." Pennant {British Zoology, ed. 1776, loi) states that "among other 

 officers, his British majesty has a rat-catcher, distinguished by a particular dress, 

 scarlet embroidered with yellow worsted, in which are figures of mice destroying 

 wheat-sheaves." 



