140 Transactions. — Zoology. 



It is melancholy to reflect that the New Zealand avifauna, 

 which had already, from a variety of adverse causes, become 

 endangered, should be thus subjected to an overwhelming in- 

 fluence for evil. But for this unfortunate introduction there 

 would have been some hope of many of the species being 

 permanently preserved. Indeed, it had become a subject of 

 remark that such birds as the Woodhen, the Swamp-hen, and 

 the Banded Eail were becoming more numerous in all the 

 cultivated districts, the conditions of existence being more 

 favourable. To show you that I am not raising an unneces- 

 sary wail over the birds that are vanishing, I will quote 

 a passage from Professor Newton's admirable article on 

 " Birds " (Enc. Brit., p. 742) :— 



" As a whole, the avifauna of New Zealand must be re- 

 garded as one of the most interesting and instructive in the 

 world, and the inevitable doom which is awaiting its surviving 

 members cannot but excite a lively regret in the minds of all 

 ornithologists. This regret is quite apart from any question 

 of sentiment ; if it were otherwise, it could not be defended 

 against that sentiment which prompts our colonial fellow- 

 subjects indiscriminately to stock their fields and forests not 

 only with the species of their Mother-country, but with all 

 the fowls of heaven, whencesoever they can be procured. 

 The regret we express arises from the thought that, just as we 

 lament our ignorance of the species which in various lands 

 have been extirpated by our forefathers, so our posterity will 

 want to know much more of the present ornis of New Zealand 

 than we can possibly record ; for no one nowadays can pre- 

 tend to predict the scope of investigation which will be re- 

 quired, and required in vain, by naturalists in that future 



correspondent of the Evening Post, under the nom de plume of " Bush- 

 man," commenting on the Gazette notification, writes, " I should like to 

 know when this craze of a few faddists is going to cease, for it seems to 

 me about time that some one entered a strong protest against the whole- 

 sale introduction of these pests into our beautiful adopted country. Any 

 one who, like myself, has kept ferrets for years must know that the habits 

 of the animal are entirely against its ever doing any real good as an ex- 

 terminator of rabbits, for, unlike a cat, a ferret will not hunt for the sake 

 of hunting ; and, as it almost always lays up and sleeps for two or three 

 days after a heavy meal, this must militate against its usefulness. Again, 

 ferrets and their congenitors will hardly ever touch fur if they can obtain 

 feathers, which is the reason that in many districts where pheasants and 

 quail were once plentiful they are now nearly extinct. And the last but 

 greatest evil is that ferrets are, and have been for years, killing hundreds, 

 and I might say thousands, of lambs 3'early all over the country. Now, I 

 would ask, is it any use proclaiming such vermin as ' protected animals,' 

 when the above facts are well known? Is it not merely inviting people 

 to break the law? I have for years killed every ferret, stoat, or weasel 

 that I could get a chance at ; and many others that I know do the same, 

 or we should have long since been plagued by a worse pest than the rabbits 

 ever were." 



