straggler is killed in some barn or house from which the species has long since
been supposed to have vanished, and Mr. Harting1 and others writing in natural
history papers have the melancholy satisfaction of recording ‘ last instances.’
In Sussex the late Mr. Borrer never succeeded in • securing an example from
the county, although he possessed specimens from Portsmouth and Cambridge.
Mr. R. M. Christy, however, reports ‘ having found a Black Rat lying dead on
the mud at Shoreham Harbour in April 1880, and two months later another
under similar circumstances nearer to Brighton.’ 2 Examples of the form known
as M. alexandrinus are sometimes caught about Shoreham. Two were captured
in 1898, and are in the possession of Mr. Daniel Francis. These doubtless came
recently on ships. In Somerset the Rev. Murray Matthew records an example8
killed in 1877 at Bishop’s Lydeard; in that county and in Devon Mr. Brooking
Rowe4 says that it is ‘ found occasionally,’ and has heard of both the Brown and
the Black Rat under one roof at Plymouth. Mr. Harting says ‘ half a dozen were
caught in Mr. Slade’s warehouse at Torquay in 1879,’ and according to Mr.
D’Urban the species was still to be met with near Exeter in 1875. There are
two recent records6 from Cornwall.
The Black Rat is numerous in Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark. In Sark, says
Mr. Harting, * both Black and Brown Rats coexist in the same territory, though
not quite the same haunts, the latter preferring old buildings; while in the little
island called lie des Marchands, separated from the larger island of Sark by a
deep though narrow strait about a hundred and fifty yards in width, the Black
Rat lives undisturbed.’
In London the two species of Rats have always frequented the Zoological
Gardens in Regent’s Park, and I have myself seen the ‘ Black ’ Rat twice in the
antelope house. Mr. de Winton tells me they are always there, and one day in
1903 when trying to procure a specimen for me, he saw a ‘ Black’ Rat chasing a
Brown one, and shot the less interesting animal of the two.6
The Docks, St. George’s East, and the streets of this neighbourhood in the
East of London have always been a favourite resort of the Black Rat, and I
have recently received all three varieties of the species from this district. The
very black race figured by Mr. Thorburn were captured at Messrs. Courage
1 Essays on Sport and Natural History, by J. E. Harting, pp. 156, 170.
2 Essays on Sport and Natural History, p. 161. 3 Zoologist, September 1877.
4 Catalogue o f the Mammals o f Devon. 5 Zoologist, 1878, p. 388; ibid. 1889, p. 434.
6 Mr. Bartlett was of opinion that the Black Rats were introduced in the bundles of bananas which were obtained
as food for many of the animals. In this way they were recently introduced to Covent Garden market {Field, July 4,1896).