The Black Rat

Abstract

IN regard to the distribubution of the black rat (Mus rattus), your correspondent may be glad to know that this animal, spread over the States in early days, but has since been supplanted, as in England, by the brown rat (M. decumanus). Forty years ago the black rat was the only rat in South-west Ohio. About thirty years ago the brown rat drove him out. Some years later the same occurred in Illinois. I have been informed by one of my students living in Minnesota, that neither rat is known in and about the town of St. Cloud in that state, only one having ever been seen there, and that was killed on landing from a steamer. I have seen it stated that the black rat is still to be found in some localities in England, among them the White-chapel Docks.