White. — On Bats and Mice. 197 



vanished iu a twinkling. I rushed to get my dog, but all had 

 cleared out. There were several sheepskins hanging in the 

 lower boughs of the tree, and the rats, busy eating them, on 

 hearing me coming had run aloft and tucked themselves 

 up on the smaller boughs, I candidly confess that it was a 

 case of complete mystification, and instead of hitting hard and 

 making sure of one they were all allowed to escape. 



Here, as before, were no mice for months, when they sud- 

 denly appeared, having crossed large rivers of ice-cold water 

 -or mountain-ranges, and were in thousands. The rats cleared 

 away, and we were nov>- pestered with legions of mice. I have 

 heard farm-labourers, when taking down a wheat-stack for 

 threshing, say if many^nice were found in the upper part of 

 the stack there would be few or no rats found in the 

 foundation, being driven out by the mice, or not liking their 

 company. 



Again I moved, still further into the wilds, going to the 

 head of the New Eiver (Oreti) and the shores of Lake Waka- 

 tipu, Otiigo. Here were rats which lived under the dead 

 leaves of the prickly " Spaniard," and possibly fed on the 

 roots. The Spaniard leaves forked into stiff upright fingers 

 about lin. wide, ending in an exceedingly stiff pricking 

 point. In places where no fire had passed the dry old 

 leaves turned over towards the ground, overlapping each 

 other, making a miniature bell-tent round the parent stem : 

 these were beautiful dry houses for the rats and lizards. 

 Eiits were very numerous ; and during my first winter here, 

 being snowed in with a short supply of provisions, I was 

 driven to various devices to keep things going. One was to 

 walk out on the snow with my sheep-dog and set hhn to find 

 one of these natm-al tents beneatli the snow tenanted by a fat 

 rat, wmch I would poke out with my stick for the dog to 

 catch, continuing this till a good stock of these small deer 

 were collected. I would then go home, make a bright fire, 

 singe and scrape them, and roast slowly on the ashes. 

 When cooked they gave an appetising odom- reseinbling cooked 

 rabbit, -\fter they had cooled down and had been minced up by 

 a tomahawk, they were given to the poultry. By this means I 

 .saved my hens alive and kept them nice and fat. One thing I 

 noticed iu cutting up the rats : the paunch or stonuich was full 

 of a tangiement of v.-hat seemed to be white worms of a piu- 

 wh-e look, and, perhaps, fin. long. I never found out the 

 meaning of this, but considered them a parasite, for tlae rat 

 masticates its food and would not swallow it whole. These 

 worms had certainly not been bitten. Of course, hcatmg 

 v;ould make them swell and Ix-come more apparent. They 

 could hardly be shreds of the Spaniard root. All the rats were 

 ^imilarlv affected. The curious part is that I -reeui to have 



