Bullek. — On some Cariosities of Bird-life. 139 



part of the country is a thing of the past, for the stoats and 

 weasels have swept away everything." 



An old settler at Wanganui, from whom I have received 

 many specimens in the past, writes me: "Weasels have de- 

 stroyed all game, and I think Wekas will share the same fate. 

 I never see any. I have killed seventeen weasels on my 

 place in three months ; and of the many bad things intro- 

 duced I think this the worst." And Mr. William Smyth, 

 the well-known collector, writing to me from Dunedin, says, 

 " I got only a few Wekas from Waimate last winter. They 

 have practically disappeared from the Otago country." 



Even the country babies appear to be scarcely safe, for 

 a paragraph has appeared in one of the newspapers stating 

 that a child playing on the open common at Palmerston North 

 was attacked by a pack of four stoats, and narrowly escaped 

 serious injury.* Whether this report was true or not I can- 

 not say, but it is just what is likely to happen when the blood- 

 thirsty animals become numerous enough. Side by side with 

 this wicked introduction into our fair country of animal pests 

 we have the reckless — and, to my mind, ignorant — practice on 

 our sheep-farms of poisoning hawks. There can be no doubt 

 that the Harrier (Circus gouldi) does occasionally attack 

 weakly lambs, tearing out their eyes and causing their death. 

 So, for that matter, does the large Seagull (Lanes domiuicanus) . 

 But it is much easier for a hawk to attack and prey on a 

 young rabbit than on a lamb ; and, as a matter of fact, we 

 owe to this cause that the rabbit, although it became esta- 

 blished on the sandhills of the west coast of this province 

 some twenty years ago, has never been able to sweep the 

 country as it has done elsewhere. The conditions for hunting 

 it on the open sandhills are favourable to the Harrier, and the 

 bird has effectually kept the rabbit-nuisance under. I have 

 always said that it is a dangerous thing to disturb the balance 

 of nature ; and I am persuaded that on our west coast at any 

 rate the farmers who sometimes poison with strychnine twenty 

 or more hawks in a w T eek do themselves far more harm than 

 good. But that is an evil of far less magnitude than the one 

 we have been discussing — the introduction of polecats, stoats, 

 and weasels. The Minister who, in the excess of his ignorant 

 zeal, authorised this public expenditure will probably be 

 remembered in the colony long after we are dead and gone.f 



* See Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiv., p. 90. 



f Since the above was written it has been officially notified in the 

 Government Gazette that ferrets, stoats, and weasels are protected by law ! 

 As a fitting commentary upon this the following paragraph appeared a 

 few days later in the New Zealand Times : " Stoats are reported to be very 

 troublesome in the Hawera district. One settler reports that sixteen eggs 

 out of eighteen were destroyed in one nest by stoats last week." And a 



