310 TUTIRA 



There are many alternative routes by which the species may have 

 attained the North Island. The least improbable is that descendants 

 of the original Endeavour and Resolution rats may have again taken 

 shipping, may have at very early dates boarded native craft laden with 

 food plying across Cook's Straits. 



Although there is but little to tell, we can now proceed to Mus 

 norvegicus. 



A vast change had occurred in the fortunes of this breed between 

 the sailings of the Endeavour and Resolution late in the eighteenth 

 century and the rise of the sealing and whaling industries early in 

 the nineteenth. It had in England completely ousted the old English 

 black breed from pride of place. Ports and shipping centres where once 

 the black rat had swarmed were now overrun with the brown. As had 

 formerly happened in the case of the black rat, the brown breed also 

 took shipping and was carried to New Zealand. Except that this did 

 occur, nothing more can now be certainly known ; probably the brown 

 rat arrived by many routes, by different ships, to different ports. 



In New Zealand, however, as Lot and Abraham parting from one 

 another established themselves, the one in the plain of Jordan, the other 

 in the land of Canaan, the two breeds separated themselves and divided 

 the territory lying unstocked before them. The country chosen by the 

 brown comprised the coastal belts, the settled districts, homesteads and 

 cities. The black, as became his more adventurous spirit, possessed 

 the native woods everywhere, and especially the high wet forest 

 ranges. 



The line of demarcation is, however, nowhere exactly drawn. 



The brown rat, though sparsely scattered, is to be found in high 

 country, whilst the black will here and there thinly colonise portions 

 of a settled district, tempted thereto by specially favourable conditions ; 

 it will even on occasion breed in men's houses. It is true, nevertheless, 

 that to Mus norvegicus belong cultivated land, crop and barn, whilst to 

 Mus rattus appertain the wooded wilds, the rainy forests of the interior, 

 wild fruits and drupes, forest birds and birds' eggs. On Tutira the 

 homestead and the warm fertile coastal hills are the headquarters of 

 the one ; the other possesses the trough of the run, the hinterland, 

 the forests of Opouahi, Maungaharuru, and Heru-o-Tureia. 



The black rat's domicile in outward form resembles closely the 



