<i>Xeromys</i> contains a single species, confined to Queensland, and called <i>Thomas' Rat</i> (<i>Xeromys myoides</i>, Thomas).
<i>Mastacomys</i> contains one species, the <i>Broad-toothed Rat</i> (<i>M. fuscus</i>, Thomas), found alive only in Tasmania, and fossil in New South Wales.
<i>Uromys</i> contains two species, the <i>Giant Rat</i> (<i>U. macropus</i>, Gray), and the <i>Buff-footed Rat</i> (<i>U. cervinipes</i>, Gould).
<i>Mus</i> contains twenty-seven species, widely distributed over the Continent and Tasmania.
1851. `Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land,' vol. i. p. 301:
"The Secretary read the following extracts from a letter of the Rev. W. Colenso to Ronald C. Gunn, Esq., of Launceston, dated Waitangi, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, 4th September, 1850:— `I have procured two specimens of the ancient, and all but quite extinct, New Zealand Rat, which until just now (and notwithstanding all my endeavours, backed, too, by large rewards) I never saw. It is without doubt a true <i>Mus</i>, smaller than our English black rat (<i>Mus Rattus</i>), and not unlike it. This little animal once inhabited the plains and <i>Fagus</i> forests of New Zealand in countless thousands, and was both the common food and great delicacy of the natives— and already it is all but quite classed among the things which were."
1880. A. R. Wallace, `Island Life,' p. 445:
"The Maoris say that before Europeans came to their country a forest rat abounded, and was largely used for food . . . Several specimens have been caught . . . which have been declared by the natives to be the true Kiore Maori—as they term it; but these have usually proved on examination to be either the European black rat or some of the native Australian rats . . . but within the last few years many skulls of a rat have been obtained from the old Maori cooking-places and from a cave associated with moa bones, and Captain Hutton, who has examined them, states that they belong to a true Mus, but differ from the <i>Mus rattus</i>."
<hw>Rata</hw>, <i>n</i>. Maori name for two New Zealand erect or sub-scandent flowering trees, often embracing trunks of forest trees and strangling them: the Northern Rata, <i>Metrosideros robusta</i>, A. Cunn., and the Southern Rata, <i>M. lucida</i>, Menz., both of the <i>N.O. Myrtaceae</i>. The tree called by the Maoris <i>Aka</i>, which is another species of <i>Metrosederos (M. florida</i>), is also often confused with the Rata by bushmen and settlers.
In Maori, the <i>adj</i>. <i>rata</i> means red-hot, and there may be a reference to the scarlet appearance of the flower in full bloom. The timber of the <i>Rata</i> is often known as <i>Ironwood</i>, or <i>Ironbark</i>. The trees rise to sixty feet in height; they generally begin by trailing downwards from the seed deposited on the bark of some other tree near its top. When the trailing branches reach the ground they take root there and sprout erect. For full account of the habit of the trees, see quotation 1867 (Hochstetter), 1879 (Moseley), and 1889 (Kirk).