THE NEW ZEALAND RAT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3754, 27 July 1883, Page 4

THE NEW ZEALAND RAT.

"Land and AVater," in an interesting review of '' Essays on Sport and Natural History," by James Edmund Harting, an eminent English naturalist, says: Harting'» account of the "Old English Black Rat" is one of tho best samples of this characteristic of his From whence did the black rat come to England r is a query not easily to bo answered, but Mr Harting, although he has not solved the question, patiently follows his friend Mas ratlus, "the " house-rat " of tho civilised world," as he stylos it, all over the globe, finding, howover, that widely distributed as it is there are localities Avhoro it is absolutely unknown, and others Avhere, as in England, its more robust cousin, the brown rat, appears to be slowly but surely, on the principle, avo suppose, of the survival of the fittest, pushing it off the face of tho earth. Mr Harting says "the black rat introduced by European ships to Ncav Zealand " has overrun tho country and nearly exterminated a former native species, the only terrestrial mammal yet ascertained to have existed in New Zealand. "It would be interesting," he adds, " to knoAV whether tho brown rat is hoav established*' there to the prejudice in turn of tho black one." "We Avould remark that it is not to tho black rat, but to the broAvn rat or Nonvay rat [Mus decumanus) that AY alter L. Buller, iv his "Birds of New Zealand" (1873), attributes the extinction of the kiorc, to quote the Maori name of the frugivorous native rat of Noav Zoaland alluded to by Mr Harting. AVhichover of the tAvo dominating rats played the part of exterminator to tho kinre, not only robbed tho native tribes belonging to tho wooded parts of tho country of their principal animal food, but have, in the opinion of Mr Buller, to answer for tho almost extinction of the Sceloglau.v albifavies, or laughing owl, a curious ground bird which fed chiefly on these small mammals, and which has all but disappeared since their extermination. AYe do not forget that Captain F. AY. Hutton, in the "Ibis," 3rd s., vol. iv., questions Avhcther an indigenous rat CA-cr did exist in New Zealand at all, to form the food of the dismal-A-oiced Sccloglaux albifavies (somewhat unhappily called the laughing oaa'l), or to become exterminated by either the black or tho brown rat, as the case may be. To those who make the distribution of animals a study tho (jucstion is full of interest.