172 
Ratural Bistory Rotes in Rew Zealand. 
By F. W. ANDREWS. 
READ BEFORE THE NATURAL HISTORY AND GEOLOGICAL SECTION, 
JANUARY 26th, 1906. 
WILL endeavour to give my patchy experiences and observations 
I in a few “ Notes on Natural History in New Zealand,” with a 
reference, in the first instance, to the acclimatized wild animals 
and birds, so carelessly and so criminally introduced by the early 
settlers. . 
Apart from the pigs brought by Captain Cook in 1773, it 
is generally known, I think, that New Zealand at the time of its 
settlement in 1842 was a mammal-less land with the exception of 
two small bats and a species of rat. The latter, by some authorities, 
has been considered an importation, but had it been so, we should 
scarcely have found that great and generally accurate observer, 
Darwin, in his “ Descent of Man,” referring to the native rat as 
‘almost exterminated.” ‘To all outward appearances it was extinct, 
but had the great exponent of evolution seen the periodical visita- 
tions of the little rodent in the spring of 1889 and on previous occa- 
sions, he would have changed his views as to its extinction. Fora 
period of ten days or a fortnight the mountain rat, as it was called, 
swept down from the bush-clad hills in countless thousands. Slow, 
listless, and comparatively harmless, the little rat pervaded the settle- 
ments of Marlborough and Nelson provinces. Not stopping to bur- 
