312 TUTIRA 



miscellaneous cargo could the mouse have obtained during the long 

 voyage shelter and safety from his voracious kinsman the rat. 



Although twice during my occupancy of Tutira irruptions of mice 

 have overrun the station, it is unlikely that the place has been directly 

 stocked from the north. The distance is too great, the obstacles too 

 serious. Mice are not great adventurers ; their pilgrimages are com- 

 paratively short and unsustained. A violent storm would in a few 

 hours destroy the movement, for after a single night of three or four 

 inches of cold gale-driven rain I have found them dead in scores. They 

 can, in fact, no more stand heavy weather without shelter than can the 

 sparrow. We may take it, therefore, that the local origin of Tutira mice 

 was almost certainly the port of Napier. Thence there may have been 

 a migration sufficiently sustained to reach the station. On the other 

 hand, mice may have been directly packed up on horseback amongst 

 station stores. Certainly from the homestead they have been carried 

 over every part of the run in grass -seed bags; I have myself sown 

 the half-smothered little creatures from sacks of grass and clover seed. 



To recapitulate : there are or have been four species of rat on 

 Tutira in my time ; firstly, a species four instances of which I have 

 given at second hand which may or may not be the kiore maori (Mus 

 maorium). These four captures have taken place at intervals of years. 

 Certainly it is not impossible that the little native rat should still exist 

 on a run whose miles of cliff and crag offer such extraordinary chances 

 of harbourage to a persecuted race. 



Secondly, there is the breed often known as the bush rat. Of it 

 I showed a dozen skins to the authorities at the South Kensington 

 Natural History Museum. They were skins, I was told, of Mus rattus, 

 the old English black rat. 



There is the brown rat (Mus norvegicus) ; lastly, there is the mouse 

 (Mus musculus). 



The first chapter in the modern history of New Zealand was the 

 arrival in the fourteenth century of the fleet of native canoes known 

 as the Jieke or great migration. It was marked, according to tradition, 

 by the advent of Mus maorium. 



The second chapter was the landing of Europeans. In the annals 

 of natural history it was marked by the appearance of the black or bush 

 rat (Mus rattus). 



