BLACK AND BROWN RATS. 
13 
es, naturalists believe these came from the East Indies ; others 
re believe they came from the West. Many assert they came 
ve from JSTorway, while others maintain that they were com- 
id mon in England before the Norwegians even heard of them, 
is . It may surprise those who are sticklers for the Scandi- 
al navian origin, to know that this rat was brought to England 
\<i ifrom the Indies and Persia in 1730 ; that in 1750 the breed 
e. made its way to France, and its progress over Europe has 
1- 1 since then been more or less rapid ; and that when Pallas 
le Iwas travelling in Southern Russia he saw the first detach- 
y ment arrive, near the mouth of the Volga, in 1766. 
iti I Some respectable authorities state that the brown rat 
a I came from Persia and the southern regions of Asia, and 
1^ I that the fact is rendered sufficiently evident froui the testi- 
• I monies of Pallas and F. Cuvier. Pallas describes the 
1 migratory nature of these rats, and states that in the autumn 
jof 1729 they arrived at Astrachan, in Pussia, in such 
[ incredible numbers that nothing could be done to oppose 
3 [them. They came from the western deserts, and even the 
waves of the Volga did not arrest their progress. 
It is said by others that their first -arrival was on the 
coast of Ireland, in those ships that used to trade in pro- . 
visions to Gibraltar, and that perhaps we owe to a single 
couple of these animals the numerous progeny now infesting 
the whole extent of the British empire. Mr. Newman 
asserts that we received the rat from Hanover, whence 
it was called the Hanoverian rat. Mr. Waterton states 
that his father, who was a naturalist, always maintained 
'that they came to us in the very ship which brought George I. 
!to England, and that they were seen swimming in a shoal 
from the ship to the shore. Pennant says that the brown 
[rat arrived in England about 1728, and in Paris twenty years 
later ; but a modern writer asserts that they appeared in 
France in the middle of the sixteenth century, and were first 
observed in Paris. Bufibn says that it is uncertain from 
whence they came, though it was only ten years before, that 
they arrived in France, and this I believe to be about the true 
state of the case ; though the Egyptians maintain that they 
eighteenth century. He further observes that it appears to belong to 
Persia, where it lives in burrows, and that it was not till 1727 that, 
after an earthquake, it arrived at Astrachan, by crossing the Volga. 
