MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 
229 
of those birds was an adult in full plumage ; but the other seemed 
to be immature. — C. T. M. Plowright. 
All'S RATTUS at Yarmouth. — At the last Monthly Meeting it 
will bo remembered, Mr. Patterson, in his Yarmouth Notes, referred 
to the existence of the old English Black Kat at Yarmouth. 
I think several of the members expected, as I certainly did, that it 
was some recent importation of the Mediterranean species (or, as 
some say, variety), Mus alexaudrinus , that Mr. Patterson has 
found ; but he stuck to his guns that it was rattu s, and through 
Mr. Southwell, who has taken much trouble to thresh out the 
matter, specimens were sent to Mr. Eagle Clarke at Edinburgh and 
Mr. Barrett-Hamilton of London. The former wrote at once, 
5th March, 189G : “The Rats you send are most undoubtedly 
the old English species, Mus rattus, and their occurrence in 
abundance in Yarmouth is an interesting fact. Mus raitus and 
Mus alexandriuus are considered to be race of the same species; 
the black ra/tns, being the form found in temperate regions, and 
the brown alexandriuus the tropical one. Yours truly, W. Eagle 
Clarke.” 
Mr. Barrett- Hamilton’s reply was almost precisely to the same 
effect, and equally positive that the specimens sent were raff us and 
not alexandrinus. Before two such authorities I suppose we must 
all submit, and though we have some of us been taught to consider 
raitus and alexarulnnus good distinct species, though closely 
allied, it does not, I think, very much matter which we call 
them, well-marked varieties or closely allied species. But, admitting 
the Yarmouth Rats to be raitus (and I must confess that 
though unconvinced by some immature specimens shown bv 
Mr. Patterson, a full-grown female he has since sent me, 
and which Mr. Roberts is preserving for me, is most typical of 
what I have thought rattus to be) this is far from making them of 
the old English race, those which though apparently not here in the 
time of the Romans, had still been settled several centuries in 
the county, when they were driven out by the present universal 
Brown Rat, Mus d ecu mantis, about the time we lost the old line of 
kings, and the Royal House of Hanover succeeded that of Stuart. 
The Brown Rat has consequently been very generally known as the 
Hanoverian Rat. I have myself generally called it by that name. 
It is supposed to have been originally a denizen of the tar East, 
