THE STOCKING OF TUTIRA BY ALIEN ANIMALS 311 



untidy nest of the British house -sparrow ; unconcealed and obvious, 

 it may be found in masses of " lawyer " or native bramble (Rubus 

 australis) wrapping some tall shrub, in thickets of supple-jack 

 (Rhipogonum scandens), in dense shrubberies of tutu (Coriaria 

 ruscifolia). Within this rough, rude, careless structure extends an 

 elongated dome, tidy and warm, usually built and lined with a 

 single material. Oftenest at Tutira the leaves of the tutu, or the 

 leaves of the native bramble, are worked in as scales and shingles, 

 and so made to curve and overlap one another as to produce 

 a rainproof roof. The black rat is comparatively harmless to man and 

 his property. In camp, where the brown will in a night rip and tear 

 to pieces a flour-bag, the black breed will nibble rather than rend and 

 waste. It is Mus rattus that is probably chiefly responsible for the 

 disappearance of the Polynesian species, whose ancient feeding-grounds 

 lay in the woods and forests. Although, I am told, practically extinct in 

 Britain, the black rat is common throughout the uplands and wilds of 

 New Zealand. 



About the habits of the brown rat there is nothing that calls for 

 special comment. It seems to live on Tutira as its forebears have lived 

 in the old world : going forth during summer to the open lands, and 

 during winter - time in some degree returning to the shelter of 

 buildings. The brown rat is as deadly to native birds in the lowlands 

 and swamps as is his black relative to species inhabiting the highland 

 forests. 



The third member of the Mus family, the mouse (Mus musculus), 

 seems to have arrived at a considerably later date. The late Archdeacon 

 Samuel Williams has informed me that he has no recollection of mice in 

 New Zealand until the 'thirties. About that date they were noticed at 

 the Bay of Islands Mission Station. Vessels were then beginning to 

 reach the colony, laden or partly laden with cargoes of a kind that 

 for the first time offered shelter, harbourage, and breeding accommo- 

 dation for the small creature. 



It was in association with toys for white children, printing paper, 

 printing-press machinery, ironmongery, clothes for English ladies, seeds 

 for the Mission garden, cereals for the Mission fields, linen and cotton 

 goods, books, bells, glass, and crockery, that I imagine the mouse to 

 have reached New Zealand. At any rate, only in the intracacies of a 



