230 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Sir George Grey informs me that lie sent to the British Museum some 

 grey " Maori rats" which had been caught in the interior of the South Island 

 in 1847 by Mr. Torlesse, and that Dr. Gray had said that they were identical] 

 with a rat found in Polynesia, by which he must have meant the black rat] 

 {Mus rattus) for none of the islands in the Pacific possess an indigenous rat. 

 Dr. Buller also collected a considerable amount of evidence to show that the 

 " kiore-maori " was identical with a rat — -now in the Colonial Museum — 

 which he described (Trans. N.Z. Inst., III., p. 1) under the name of Mus 

 novce-zealandice, but which is certainly Mus rattus. Mr. Colenso says (" Proc. 

 R. Soc. of Van Diemen's Land," 1851, p. 301), in a letter to B. Gunn, Esq., 

 dated 4th Sept., 1850, that after considerable trouble he had procured two 

 specimens of the native rat, which he describes as " smaller than our English 

 black rat {M. rattus) and not unlike it." Against this we have the statement 

 of Dr. Dieffenbach, who says (" New Zealand," II., p. 185) that it was the 

 English and not the Norway rat that killed ofi" the " kiore-maori." This, I 

 think, must be a mistake, as all the Maoris attribute 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 

 Mammals," p. 277) that the Norway rat (M. decumanus) was not introduced 

 into New Zealand in 1843, buf he gives no evidence of the truth of this 

 statement, and it is unquestionably erroneous.* The whole of the reliable 

 evidence that we have, therefore, 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 

 famnilia/ris (" Pro. 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 

 naturalist believes in an indigenous native dog except Dr. Haast, who has 

 argued {Trans. N.Z. Inst., TV., 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 as of later date, he finds gnawed bones .t But I am not aware that 



* Since reading this 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. 



f The skulls of dogs found in old Maori cooking-places prove undoubtedly that Canis 

 famiUaris existed in New Zealand long before Europeans came here. Captain Cook says 

 (21st October, 1769) that the dogs were " small and ugly," and Mr. Anderson (" Cook's 

 3rd Voyage," I., 153) calls it a "sort of fox-dog." Capt. 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. 



