people, strongly persuaded that so great a country could not fail of possessing new and unknown animals, had already twice reported that he had seen a brown animal, something less than a jackal or little fox, about the dawn of morning, sitting on a stump of a tree near our tents, and running off at his approach. But as this circumstance has never been confirmed by any subsequent testimony, nothing is more probable than that the want of day-light had deceived him, and that he had either observed one of the numerous wood-hens, which are brown, and creep through the bushes very frequently; or that one of our cats, on the watch for little birds, had been mistaken for a new quadruped.In 1864, Captain Frederick Hutton, speculated that the animal seen at Dusky Bay was probably a dog, "as none on board had at that time seen a dog in New Zealand. The evidence of a kind of otter inhabiting the South Island rests upon some foot-prints seen by Dr. Haast". Walter Mantell—various—1840s. Recorded in an interview with Tarawhatta, principal chief at Umukaha/Temuka: "He informed me that the length of the animal is about two feet from the point of the nose to the root of the tail; the fur grisly brown—thick short legs—bushy tail—head between that of a dog and a cat—lives in holes—the food of the land kind is lizards, of the amphibious kind, fish—does not lay eggs. Thinking of Marsupials, from our neighbour-land New Holland, I made especial enquiry as to an abdominal pouch. The reply was in the negative; and altogether the account pointed to an animal resembling the Otter or Badger, rather than to the Beaver, which some persons have thought it might prove to be." The Rev. Richard Taylor—various—first half of the 19th century and perhaps earlier. Taylor noted in Te Ika a Maui: "A man named Seymour, of Otaki, stated that he had repeatedly seen an animal in the Middle Island, near Dusky Bay, on the south-west coast, which he called a musk-rat, from the strong smell it emitted. He said, its tail was thick, and resembled the ripe pirori, the fruit of the kiekie, which is not unlike in appearance the tail of a beaver. This account was corroborated by Tamihana te Rauparaha, who spoke of it as being more than double the size of the Norway rat, and as having a