MAMMALS WAITE. 167 



All circumstances being taken into account, it appears probable 

 that the Maori rat is also identical with this widely distributed 

 Pacific species, and in one of his papers Hutton 13 has pointedly 

 remarked : " It will be interesting to compare these skulls with 

 specimens of the black rat* from Polynesia, for they will probably 

 be found to be identical." And again, writing on Mus novce- 

 zealandice, Buller, he adds 14 "There can, I think, be no doubt that 

 these rats belong to the Polynesian variety." More recently 

 Thomas has also expressed doubts as to the specific identity of 

 the Maori rat, in the note previously quoted, and as mentioned 

 by Buller, 5 who further remarks that there are specimens of this 

 form in the British Museum from the Fiji Islands, Norfolk 

 Island, and New Caledonia. This view is supported by Maori 

 tradition as related by Hochstetter, 12 to the effect that : " the 

 Kumara, or sweet potato (Convolvulus batata), the taro (Arum 

 esculentum), the calabash-plant Hue (Lagenaria vulgaris), the 

 Karaki tree (Corynocarpus Icevigata), the rat Kiore, the Pukeko 

 (Porphyrio), and the green parrot Kakariki, are said to have 

 been imported from Hawaiki." This traditional ancestral home 

 is considered by modern Ethnologists to be Savaii, one of the 

 Samoan Islands. 



The New Zealand rat has a literature to itself, which will be 

 found mainly in Trans, and Proc. N.Z. Institute. This literature I 

 have not attempted to epitomise, and ha've referred to it only for 

 odd records of habits. There is apparently still room for research 

 among the New Zealand rats. The Kiore rat is said to be extinct, 

 the Mus maorium to swarm, fide Meeson, 17 Rutland, 19 etc. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



If, as seems probable, the rat from all the Pacific Islands is 

 referable to Mus exulans, the range of the species is very great 

 indeed. Considering the native interchange which has taken 

 place between islands hundreds of miles apart for ages past, this 

 is not so remarkable as would at first sight appear. 



For a long distance in the West Pacific there runs an enormous 

 chain of islands, extending in a semi-circular sweep from the 

 Marshall Archipelago, north of the equator to the Austral or 

 Tubai Islands in the south-east. Our colleague has written of 

 this as the Marshall-Austral chain, and dealt with it more 

 particularly in his report. f 



From each of the main links of this long chain of islands, we 

 possess records of the occurrence of a native rat, as below 

 enumerated. 



* Our examples and also all other accounts agree in describing the 

 colour of the Pacific rat as being similar to that of Mus decumanus, and 

 not black as above indicated. 



t See p. 3, " General Account." 



