126 Transactions. — Zoology. 



round the but, which I filled every morning. They dug up and 

 carried away potatoes which were planted in the garden. The 

 bird-skins I had in a drying hut, hung on thin wires and well 

 poisoned, but the rats climbed the rafters, jumped down on 

 them, and spoiled several. I had skeletons hanging on a thin 

 wire, 12 feet high and 20 feet long ; for three weeks they tried in 

 vain to walk the tight rope, and at last succeeded ; then they 

 wound their tails round the flax like an opossum, and slid down 

 nearly 2 feet, when they gnawed the bones and spoiled the skele- 

 tons. I cut two tracks, one six miles long, from Landing Bay 

 to Northport, and the other eight miles long up to the " Three 

 Brothers." The first night we camped on the mountains the 

 grass country was swarming with rats. They gnawed at our 

 boots, though we had them with us in the tent ; while we ate our 

 supper by the fire, they came behind us and nibbled at the bones 

 we placed for the dogs ; but they amused me most by disturbing 

 Mr. Kimmer (my companion); he sleeps so soundly that nothing 

 wakes him, even when I fired the gun at the rats in the hut he 

 did not hear it ; but on the mountains they took a fancy for his 

 hair, and he was awakened three times in one night by their 

 biting it away. I should have thought they would have been 

 afraid the first time they saw men, dogs, and fire. They are 

 also very destructive to the birds. I have not found a single 

 Rock Wren here, and have always noticed where the rats are 

 numerous there are few birds. Those birds which live and 

 breed near the ground have very little chance of preserving their 

 species, since the rats eat their eggs and young. They destroy 

 large birds as well as small. I had a number of Kakapos in a 

 cage to send to Auckland, for the proposed preserve for native 

 birds on the Little Ban ier ; the rats killed two and wounded 

 others, by biting their tbroats and eating parts of their heads off. 

 Nine years ago I had live Kakapos, which the Acclimatization 

 Society in Christchurch permitted me to place in their large 

 cages in the garden ; the rats killed them, and ate the half of one 

 away. The rats here prefer animal to vegetable food ; there are 

 plenty of miro and other berries on the ground, but they will 

 not eat them. I often found in rocks, shells, birds' feathers and 

 rats' dung, where the rats bad been eating their prey. Between 

 Landing Bay and Northport there is a large birch tree, under- 

 mined with many holes, which is the habitation of a large colony 

 of rats. For 4 feet above the ground the bark of the tree is 

 eaten off ; round the tree there is no vegetation, and the stench is 

 very bad. I never had in all my expeditions so hard a fight with 

 rats as I have had in this. It has taken five months' shooting, 

 poisoning, and trapping before they seemed to lessen at all. 

 Now there are only two, and they are too shrewd to go in the 

 trap, eat poison, or give me a chance to shoot them. 



