28 Captain F. W. Hutton on the Geographical 



bute the destruction of the edible rat to the brown rat, and 

 it could only have been from Maoris that Dr. Dieffenbach 

 got his information. Mr. Murray also states (Distr. of Mam- 

 mals, p. 277) that the Norway rat [M. decumanus) was not 

 introduced into New Zealand in 1843 ; but he gives no evi- 

 dence of the truth of this statement ; and it is unquestionably 

 erroneous *. The whole of the reliable evidence that we have, 

 tlierefore, goes to prove that the Maori rat was no other than 

 M. rattus. 



The so-called " native dog " has been determined by Dr. 

 Gray to be Canis famiUaris (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, p. 508), 

 and not the Australian species or variety called Canis dingo ^ 

 which is the strongest possible evidence of its being merely an 

 escaped domestic breed ; indeed I am not aware that any na- 

 turalist believes in an indigenous native dog, except Dr. Haast, 

 who has argued (Trans. N. Z. Inst. iv. p. 88) that a wild dog 

 existed in New Zealand before the domesticated one, because 

 in certain old Maori cooking-places he has found remains of 

 the dog but no gnawed bones ; while in others, which he 

 considers of later date, he finds gnawed bones f. But I am 

 not aware that he has any proof of the existence of a dog in 

 New Zealand before the an-ival of man ; the difference of 

 date of these cooking-places for which Dr. Haast contends is 

 denied by many observers, and his argument derived from 

 the presence or absence of ground stone implements has, I 

 think, been successfully controverted. I can therefore attach 

 no weight to the absence of gnawed bones. On the other 

 hand, there is the fact that no indigenous dog or rat has ever 

 been found on an island that was not inhabited by other Mam- 

 malia ; and when we remember that Marsupials came into ex- 

 istence long before rats and dogs, it is difficult to see how the 

 latter conld possibly get to any country without the former 

 coming also. It is evident that neither Banks, nor Solander, 

 nor the Forsters considered the dog and rat that they found in 



* Since reading tliis paper Mr. Nichol has informed me that the brown 

 rat was common in Nelson when he first arrived in the early part of 1842, 

 and that he never saw any other kind there except a single specimen of a 

 very large and slightly striped variety. 



t The skulls of dogs found in old Maori cooking-places prove un- 

 doubtedly that Canis familiaris existed in New Zealand long before Euro- 

 peans came here. Captain Cook says (21st October, 1769) that the dogs 

 ■were " small and ugly ; " and INIr. Anderson (' Cook's Third Voyage,' i. 

 p. 153) calls it a " sort of fox-dog." Captain Cook also says in his first 

 voyage that the dog was used for no other purpose than to eat. The fact 

 that the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands have the same name {kuri) for 

 the dog as the New-Zealanders is strong evidence that the latter brought 

 it with them ; for if not, they would have lost the name, as they have done 

 that of the fowl. 



