Excerpt from The House Rat Both species of house rats apparently originated in the Orient, though the black rat was the first to invade the Western World, hav I ing migrated to Europe in the twelfth century. The date of its arrival in North America is not recorded, but inasmuch as the black rat is' the common ship rat and formerly few vessels were free from it, it is quite likely that it was introduced at the time ships first moored on the American shores. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition.

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