THE BROWN OR COMMON RAT 609 



called " S6-Rotter " or sea-rats, and in 1776 had become so numerous 

 as to be called the " common kind." According to Svabo,^ this species 

 was first introduced to the Faeroes in 1768 by a ship called The King 

 of Prussia; while on a voyage from Norway to Dublin, this vessel 

 was wrecked on the coast of Lewis, and the wreck drifted thence to 

 Sudero. The species spread quickly throughout the islands, and was 

 called by the inhabitants " the great or new rat," in contradistinction 

 from the "common rat" {rattus) with which they had long been 

 familiar. Svabo gives much information, with dates, relating to the 

 progress of this species in the Faeroes between 1768 and 1781. In 

 Sweden it does not seem to have been known before 1790, and the 

 earliest mention of it appears to have been made by Thunberg in 

 1798. 



In France the species was said by Erxleben to have arrived at 

 Paris in 1750, but it was not known to Bufifon prior to 1753. It did 

 not appear in Switzerland before the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century (1809, Schintz, Blasius, and Fatio). In Spain its introduction 

 dates from the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century (Cabrera) ; and in Italy perhaps from the middle of the 

 eighteenth century (de Selys; Nickel, Zool. Garten, 1874, ^SS)- 



A certain wealth of tradition has gathered around the advent of 

 this species in Britain. According to one old legend it first came to 

 England from Germany in the very ship which brought William of 

 Orange over in 1688 (Charles Waterton's Essays on Nat. Hist., sex. i, 

 2n); and according to another, positively supported by Waterton's 

 father, it accompanied the House of Hanover on its emigration from 

 Germany in 17 14 — hence the name " Hanoverian Rat," frequently 

 bestowed upon this species by the British in the eighteenth century. 

 Others, as Smith {Universal Directory, etc.), maintained that it came 

 from Norway in timber-laden ships — an impossibility, because the 

 species at that time did not exist in Norway. Pennant put the date 

 of its introduction to England as about 1728 or 1729, and this date has 

 been adopted by Boyd Dawkins, and most other writers. In all 

 probability we received our first stock with cargoes from vessels trading 

 with Russian ports. 



Its arrival in Scotland dates from the period between 1764 and 

 1774, according to Walker {Mammalia Scotica, 498), and it reached 

 Selkirkshire between 1770 and 1777; its progress from Selkirk to the 

 upper valley of the Tweed, between 1776 and 1792, is narrated in the 



' Svabo's unpublished MS. reposes in the library of the University of Copen- 

 hagen, and was the chief source of the zoological information given by Landt 

 {Forsog til en Beskrivelse over Farberne, Kjobenhavn, 1800). We are greatly 

 indebted to Dr Knud Andersen for the loan of his MS. copy of parts of this 

 important work. 



