84 MAMMALIA 



of rats is capable of producing 20,000,000 descendants in three years. In 

 temperate climates reproduction is at a standstill during winter 1 . 



* The Mouse (Mus musculus) 



The first notice of the appearance of the mouse in the North 

 Island is in Dieffenbach (vol. II, p. 185), but no doubt it was introduced 

 early last century. When Wilkes visited the Auckland Islands in 

 1840 the only living creature seen besides the birds was a small 

 mouse. According to R. Gillies, who wrote in 1872: 



" it is quite certain that there were no mice in Otago in 1852 " (he arrived in 

 1848), " but a year or perhaps two years after they were noticed in Dunedin 

 first. As soon as the mice appeared, the Rats disappeared. . . .The Moly- 

 neux stopped their southern migration for a time, and it was considerably 

 later before Molyneaux Island (Inchclutha) was touched by them." 



Taylor White speaks of mice appearing in the Canterbury Plains in 

 the early days of settlement (1855) onwards " suddenly in Thousands." 

 Pastor Wohlers, long a missionary working among the natives on 

 Ruapuke in Foveaux Straits, states that mice were first brought to the 

 island in the 'Elizabeth Henrietta,' which was wrecked there in 

 1824, and that even as late as 1873 they continued to be known as 

 " Henriettas." Mr Philpott writing on 2nd January, 1918, said: 



There is a plague of mice in the district west of the Waiau. From 

 Bluecliff to the Knife and Steel near the Big River, and beyond, each hut 

 (the Government huts on the now abandoned telephone track to Puysegur 

 Point) was overrun with them. And not only at the huts, but on the beach 

 and in the dense bush, wherever we went, they were plentiful. At the 

 Hump, near Lake Hauroto, they were as numerous as elsewhere. This 

 prevalence of mice is certainly not usual ; I have been on the Hump four 

 or five times since 1911, and last year tramped along the Knife and Steel, 

 and apart from an odd one or two, no mice were in evidence on former 

 trips. One noticeable thing about the mice was their boldness ; they were 

 evidently very hungry. The wekas caught many of them, swallowing them 

 whole, head first. 



1 In a letter written from Sydney, N.S. Wales, dated 28th April, 1919, which 

 appeared in Nature of 3rd July (p. 345), Mr Thomas Steel states that: "under a 

 creeper in my garden near Sydney, the common snail (Helix aspera) was very 

 abundant, and Mus decumanus used to devour large quantities; the apex of the 

 shell was always bitten off so that the mollusc could be readily extracted. On the 

 Upper Waikato River, New Zealand, the same rat dives into the water and gathers 

 the fresh -water Unio. On the river-banks the shells are gnawed open and the animal 

 eaten. The shells are always bitten through at the same spot of one valve, but I 

 forget now whether that was the right or left one." 



"In Australia at certain seasons a 'cutworm' moth, known as the 'bogong' or 

 'bugong' (Agrotis infusa), swarms in myriads in many places, and is, after the 

 wings have been singed in a charcoal fire, used as an article of food by the aboriginals. 

 These moths sometimes invade the cities and crowd into houses and stores for the 

 sake of darkness. At Melbourne, in a large sugar store, I have noticed Mus decu- 

 manus collect the moths and eat the bodies, rejecting the wings." 



