Cheeseman. — On New Zealand Bats. 219 



dog : The early voyagers and first residents of New Zealand 

 all agree in stating that the Maori dog was unknown in the 

 wild state. It was a purely domesticated species, fed by the 

 Maoris on fish and refuse offal, and valued by them for two 

 reasons — for yielding a dainty article of food, and for supply- 

 ing the material for then- much-prized dogskin mats, or 

 providing them with hair for the ornamentation of their 

 taiahas or other weapons. Before the arrival of Europeans, 

 as Mr. Colenso remarks, a wild dog would have been just as 

 much unknown to the Maoris as a wild sheep would be in 

 England at the present time. The wild dog about which 

 European settlers have talked in recent times is the descend- 

 ant of curs introduced by the whalers or first traders, and 

 has no resemblance to the ugly, stupid, and inoffensive 

 animal described by Cook and others. In short, all the 

 reliable evidence that we possess respecting the Maori dog 

 goes to prove that it was a domesticated species that the 

 Maoris brought with them when they first colonised New 

 Zealand. 



With respect to the rat, the evidence is not quite so clear. 

 It is a much-debated question whether the rat hunted by the 

 Maoris, and so much prized by them for food that intertribal 

 wars have arisen for the possession of favourite hunting- 

 grounds, is living at the present time or not. Mr. Colenso, 

 whose knowledge of the natural history of New Zealand, and 

 close acquaintance with the Maori race, should give great 

 weight to his opinions, believes that no living European has 

 seen the true Maori rat — that it has vanished from the list of 

 living beings, and has become as extinct as the moa or 

 dodo. Others, whose views are perhaps equally entitled to 

 attention, believe that the small black rat still found in forest 

 districts, and on the outlying islands, and which occasionally 

 makes incursions in considerable numbers into the settled 

 portions of the country, is the true indigenous species. But, 

 whichever of these views is correct, a comparison of skulls 

 found in old Maori eating-places seems to have established 

 the fact that the Maori rat was identical with a species widely 

 distributed in Polynesia, and which has been known to have 

 been unintentionally carried by the Polynesian natives from 

 one group of islands to another. The Maoris have a tradition 

 that they brought the rat with them from Hawaiki, and, until 

 remains of the animal have been found in deposits older than 

 the time of Maori occupation, we must attribute considerable 

 weight to that view. 



If, therefore, our bats are the only indigenous land- 

 mammals that we possess, considerable interest ought to 

 attach to them. As already mentioned, we have two species, 

 which are familiarly known by the names of the short-eared 



