THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 607 



" Common Rat," the name adopted here as being free from ambiguity 

 (see p. 579). 



Sex names : — Buck and doe ; dog and bitch (occasionally) ; and boar 

 and sow (amongst fanciers). 



Local names: — "Ratten" or "rotten" of parts of Yorkshire and 

 Scotland (E. R. Alston).^ 



Distribution and history : — The Common Rat is undoubtedly an 

 Asiatic species, and has found its way to Europe only within the last 

 two centuries. What precise part of Asia is to be regarded as its 

 original home, has been the subject of considerable controversy. 

 Pallas did not find it in Siberia, and Gmelin erroneously ^ claimed to 

 have discovered it, inhabiting burrows in the fields in considerable 

 numbers in Persia. Pennant, reflecting on these facts, and having 

 heard of the Indian Bandicoots and their habits, conjectured that it 

 had been brought from Persia and the East Indies to Western Europe 

 by shipping. This view was maintained by many subsequent writers, 

 and in 1852 Frank Buckland {Curiosities Nat. Hist., \., 62^ said: — "It 

 is now agreed by most naturalists that it is a native of India and 

 Persia ; that it spread onwards into European Russia, and was thence 

 transferred by merchant ships to England and elsewhere." 



When, however, the mammals of India came to receive serious 

 attention it soon became evident that this species was not a native of 

 that country, it being met with only in the neighbourhood of certain 

 ports ; and Blyth was led to " suspect that the Trans-Baikalian region 

 of East Asia had at least as good a claim to the discredit of originating 

 the abominable brown rat as any other." Blanford, finding the species 

 to be at present unknown in Persia, and to occur in India only along 

 the coast and navigable rivers, arrived at much the same conclusion ; 

 he thought that Chinese Mongolia might with more likelihood be 

 looked upon as its centre of dispersal. In China several short-tailed 

 species, of smaller size but more or less closely resembling norvegicus in 

 colour, occur. Thomas, receiving what purported to be a specimen of 

 one of these, viz., E. humiliatus, Milne-Edwardes, was led to suggest this 

 species as the possible wild stock of norvegicus {Proc. Zool. Soc, 1898, 

 772) ; this specimen had, however, been incorrectly determined in Paris, 

 and was in fact norvegicus, which is not uncommon in many parts of 

 China (Bonhote, Proc. cit., 1905, 393). 



Kastchenko {Ann. Mus. Zool. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersb., xvii., 

 191 2, 370) has described a wild form, his E. norvegicus primarius, 

 inhabiting the region west of Lake Baikal, thus confirming Blyth's 



> "When I was a boy, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, it was considered no mean 

 feat to be able to say rapidly and correctly the words, ' A rotten loupit o'er a rope ; 

 loup, rotten, loup,' and go on repeating them" (W. Evans, MS.). 



^ The rats found by Gmelin were probably "wild-coloured " forms oi E. rattus. 



