Tbavees. — The Bird as ihe Labourer of Man. 7 



to certain districts, but the mosquito is ubiquitous, and is 

 everywhere a pest and torment. One needs to spend a night 

 among mosquitos to understand what a true plague of flies 

 is. Hundreds of travellers might be cited on the subject, 

 and if I adduce the following testimony it is not because it 

 is the strongest I could find, but because it is one of 

 the most recent, and therefore least known : Mr. Atkinson, 

 who has laid open to us the most magnificent scenery 

 of the world, and the most inaccessible, to whom neither 

 fearful chasms and precipices, nor boiling torrents, nor swift 

 rivers, nor earthquakes and furious storms, nor eternal frost 

 and snow, nor burning waterless steppes, nor robbers, nor 

 wild beasts presented any impediment, fairly confesses his 

 conqueror in the mosquito. The gnat alone, of all creatures, 

 elicits from him a word of dread : he could not brave the 

 mosquitos. Over and over he tells us in his accounts of his 

 mountain scrambles that the mosquitos were there "in mil- 

 lions," that they were " taking a most savage revenge on him 

 for having sent his horses out of their reach," that they were 

 '•devouring him," that he " neither dared to sleep nor to look 

 out," that "the humming sound of the millions was some- 

 thing awful," that he found himself " in the very regions of 

 torment, which it was utterly impossible to endure," that 

 •' the poor horses stood with their heads in the smoke as a 

 protection against the pests," and that " to have remained on 

 the spot would have subjected them to a degree of torment 

 neither man nor beast could endure, so that they were obliged 

 to retreat." " I wish I could say," he feelingly adds, " that 

 we left the enemy in possession of the field. Not so ; they 

 pursued us with bloodthirsty pertinacity until we reached 

 some open meadows, when they were driven into their fenny 

 region by a breeze, I hope to prey on each other." 



Leaving these generalities, I will now deal shortly with 

 the subject in its application to our own Islands. I arrived 

 here in 1849, and first settled in Nelson. The area of land 

 then under cultivation was small, but even at that early date 

 most of the grains and vegetables and many of the fruits 

 common in England and France were successfully cultivated. 

 All, however, were subject to the attacks of injurious insects 

 of various species, some imported and some indigenous. The 

 large native locust, of which it is difficult at present to obtain 

 a specimen, was then very common and very injurious, whilst 

 grasshoppers existed in countless numbers. But the chief 

 injury was done by various forms of Coleoptera and Lepidoptera, 

 both foreign and indigenous. Wheat always escaped better 

 than oats or barley,* the latter especially yielding only a very 



* The Hessian fly had not tbeu appeared 



