322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The persistent spreading of European weeds to the exclusion of 

 our native plants is a fact too well known to every farmer in 

 America, The constant movement westward of the white- weed 

 and the Canada thistle marks the steady deterioration of our 

 grass -fields. Especially noteworthy has been this change in 

 Australia and New Zealand. In New Zealand the weeds of 

 Europe, toughened by centuries of struggle, have won an easy 

 victory over the native plants. Edward Wakefield, in his history 

 of New Zealand, says that " many animals and birds acquire 

 peculiarities in the new country which would indeed astonish 

 those accustomed to them in the old. They usually run to a 

 much larger size and breed oftener. They also take to strange 

 kinds of food. Birds deemed granivorous at home become in- 

 sectivorous here, and vice versa. Some learn the habits of the 

 native species. Skylarks imitate the native wagtail, and may 

 often be seen perching on fences and telegraph wires. They 

 sing in the night-time, too, a thing unheard of in the old country, 

 and doubtless acquired from the nocturnal habits of New Zealand 

 birds." 



The European house-fly in New Zealand has completely extir- 

 pated the large blue-bottle fly which was formerly a source of 

 great annoyance to the settlers. An account is given of a farmer 

 who filled a bottle with house-flies and carried them eighty miles 

 into the country, liberating them one by one, in the vicinity of his 

 sheep-folds, in order to let them take the place of the native flies. 



It is said that red clover would not grow in New Zealand un- 

 til bumble-bees were introduced to fertilize its flowers. "Wake- 

 field estimates that the introduction of these large wild bees has 

 been worth five million dollars to the farmers in New Zealand. 



Dr. Hooker states that, in New Zealand, " the cow-grass has 

 taken possession of the road-sides ; dock- and water-cress choke 

 the rivers, the sow-thistle is spread all over the country, growing 

 luxuriantly up to six thousand feet ; white clover in the mount- 

 ain districts displaces the native grasses," and the native (Maori) 

 saying is, ' ' As the white man's rat has driven away the native 

 rat, as the European fly drives away our own, and the clover 

 kills our fern, so will the Maoris disappear before the white man 

 himself" (E. L. Youmans). 



As among some characteristic survivals of the Celts in Hampshire, England, 

 Mr. T. W. Shore mentions the round huts of the charcoal-burners, resembling 

 those which were common in the Celtic period; the art cf osier-working or 

 basket-making ; the mounds on which many ancient churches are built, which 

 were probably sacred sites of those people ; and the peculiar orientation of many 

 churches twenty degrees north of east, which is supposed to have been derived 

 from the pagan Celtic reverence for the May-day sunrise. 



