Regarding the rat's history and antecedents we are informed in some books on this subject, very positively, that the common or Brown rat was brought from Norway, while other naturalists insist with a pertinacity peculiar to the tribe that the animal originally comes from Persia and India. We feel justified in believing with the majority that this kind of vermin has its origin in Asia, that venerable continent of cholera, Heathen-Chinee, and Old Testament. But again, whatsoever the different opinions may be, it is certainly found that this species of rodent is distributed over every country on the face of the earth in a very near equal way, because every ship that leaves port takes in its cargo of rats just as regularly as it does its cargo of provisions and merchandise, and thus it can be readily seen how this delicate tender blossom is carefully though unwittingly transplanted. In this way the Brown rat, which is now the strongly predominant rat party, was brought to New York and America in 1775 from England, which would doubtless give great pleasure to that part of the population with an Anglo-maniac tendency and would probably reconcile them much more to this sect of vermin. In Europe the latter made their appearance in 1730, and then spread out to every inhabitable country. "For men may come and men may go, but I go on forever" would at the first glance seem to be the case with the rat tribe as well as with the musical brooklet of Tennyson, yet the history of the rat nations is like unto the history of man--one clan waging a long and bitter war of conquest and extermination against the other until hardly any trace of the conquered but once mighty and ambitious race remains. The Black or Indigenous rat had things all its own way in North America as well as through the rest of the civilized earth, before the Brown species' sweeping invasion, the former having been entirely subdued and are now very scarce. It was easy enough for the brown rats to do this, because they were bigger, bolder, and more ferocious. Their multiplying powers, too, were sixteen times greater than the vanquished nation whose origin is shrouded in the darkest and most complete mystery.