66 
MURIDAE RECORDED FROM VICTORIA 
The Water Rat is not uncommon in Victoria and is widely 
distributed. Its usual habitat is a burrow in the bank of a 
stream or lagoon, but sometimes it lives in a fallen log. The 
burrow, which is long and usually inclined upwards from the 
entrance, ends in an enlarged chamber containing a nest of 
grass, leaves, etc. The animal is omnivorous in diet and will 
take molluscs, crustaceans, fish, small water birds and coarse 
grass or rushes. Usually four young are delivered at a birth. 
Subfamily MURINAE Baird 1857. 
This subfamily includes the true rats and mice; all are 
small and have three molar teeth in each half of each jaw. 
The tail is usually long and scaly. 
Genus RATTUS Fitzinger 1867. 
The true or normal rats. Skull strongly built, with well- 
marked supraorbital ridges which usually extend back to the 
outer corners of the interparietal. Front edge of zygomatic 
plate always convex. Molars normal, the laminae not greatly 
tilted; no anterior-internal cusp on M 1 . 
Battus assimilis (Gould). 
Mus assimilis Gould, P.Z.S., p. 241, 1857; id. Mamm. Aust., iii, pi. xv, 
1863; Collet, Zool. Jahrb., p. 838, 1887; Ogilby, Aust. Mus. Cat., 
No. 16, Aust. Mamm., p. 105, 1892. 
Epimys assimilis Thomas, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., (8), vi, p. 605, 1910; 
Troughton, Rec. Aust. Mus., xiii, p. 119, 1920. 
The Allied Rat is the most common indigenous Victoria 
rodent and is found almost throughout the State. It is a 
plump little animal with long and very soft fur. 
Description of an Average Victorian Specimen , based on 
Examination of over 100 Examples. 
General colour greyish-brown. Dorsal fur (25 mm.) slate for four-fifths 
of its length, tipped with wood-brown, the grey showing through, and the 
whole darkened by numerous long black guard-hairs which, on the hinder 
part of the body, are twice as long as the fur. Sides of body but little 
lighter, grading into ventral colouration without a line of demarcation. 
Ventral surface greyish-white ; hairs basally grey with dull white tips. Head 
as body ; cheeks slightly greyer, a few black hairs around the eye. Mysticial 
vibrissae long (50 mm.) ; black except for a few anterior hairs which are 
tipped with white. Ear long, dark brown; outer surface sparsely sprinkled 
with a few dark-brown, adpressed hairs, inner surface with even fewer short, 
silvery white hairs. Tail about as long as head and body, uniformly dark- 
brown ; sparsely clothed with short, stiff, brown hairs. Manus and pes 
well clothed with soiled white, adpressed hair. 
