Jim’s Reviews > Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 > Status Update

Early in the nineteenth century, a Tasmanian newspaper grimly announced that "the number of rats leaving the convict ship now tied up in the Bay has to be seen to be believed." Today, Old World rats infest Australia's ports and waterways and have even left the immediate vicinity of humanity to go wild in the bush, reverting to a way of life they have practiced little in thousands of years.