MAMMALS WAITE. 169 



Mariner. 16 The occurrence of a rat in the Kermadec Islands 

 was first recorded by Smith, 20 who wrote: "The only animal 

 native to the island is a small grey rat, which is very plentiful 

 in summer, but is supposed to hybernate during the winter. We 

 saw one that had been partly eaten by a hawk probably, it 

 was about five inches long." Thomas also received it from 

 Sunday Island in this group, as already quoted. Away to the 

 west it appears in New Caledonia, and again at Norfolk Island 

 on the authority of Buller, 5 who states that there are specimens 

 in the British Museum from these localities. 



The list of localities is closed by the inclusion of New Zealand 

 as the most southern limit, and to which previous mention has 

 been made in notices by Hutton, Thomas, Hochstetter, and 

 others. 



Although a systematic search of the literature of the Pacific 

 Islands would doubtless disclose many more references to the rat, 

 the above are the only definite localities I have so far met with. 

 There is little doubt that the rat exists, or rather did exist, at 

 one time or another on all the islands of the Pacific. Gill 9 

 writing in 1876, and mentioning the islands of the South Seas as 

 being inhabited by dogs, hogs, and rats, says : " The rat alone 

 is universal." 



Arundel, 2 who called at many of the atolls in the Central 

 Pacific, states : " I have never visited an island, however small 

 or barren, without finding these animals living upon it." 



HABITS. 



Unlike its European relative, the Pacific rat is usually said to 

 feed only on vegetable substances. Writing of Mangaia, in the 

 Cook Group, Gill 9 states that it feeds exclusively upon cocoanuts, 

 bananas, arrowroot, candle nuts, and papao (pawpaw) apples, and 

 that it was usual to defend growing cocoanuts from the depreda- 

 tions of the native rat by making a sort of screen cleverly secured 

 all round the tree, close to the fronds at a great height from the 

 ground. In Mariner's 10 book the rats are described as living 

 chiefly upon such vegetable substances as sugar cane, bread fruit, 

 etc., and it is incidentally mentioned that roasted cocoanut was 

 used as a bait. 



Peale 18 adds the Pandanus to this list, and states that the fruit 

 of this plant forms the principal food of the rat, hazarding the 

 suggestion that if its appetite was at all carnivorous it would be 

 found to feed upon the land crabs and molluscs on the shore, 

 such however not being the case. He describes it (Mus vitiensis) 

 as attacking pockets and packs containing edibles. 



The Kiore Maori is described by Dieffenbach 6 and others as 

 being a frugivorous rat. 



