Hutchimsox. — The Napier- Qreenmeadows Road. 411 



groups on the mud-flats and shallows of. the Inner Harbour 

 side ; the land groups in the scrub and reeds and weed- 

 choked channels that stretch away into the swamp on the 

 other. 



The mud-flats are the resort of black swan, gulls, terns, 

 curlews, and stilts, the last four often within a short distance 

 of the roadway ; but the swan, except in the wildest weather, 

 keeps far out of gunshot in the harbour shallows. In the low 

 scrub of the opposite side blackbirds and thrushes chatter and 

 whistle, starlings and mynahs wheel in flocks, with sparrows, 

 linnets, and yellow-hammers. Besides these introduced 

 species natives are fairly common ; bitterns may often be seen 

 during the season, hawks figure largely, with more rarely 

 pukeko and weka, and, still more rarely, the swamp-crake. 



It is interesting to note some of the typical land-birds 

 simulating the habits of waders and fishers. I pulled up the 

 other day to watch a large black-brown bird wading far out 

 in the sluggish channel by the roadside, thinking it must be 

 a rail, but it was only a hen blackbird ; and I have watched 

 larks busy m the same manner, thigh deep on the trailing 

 strands of the weed that chokes the channel, picking off, I 

 presume, the small shells and water-folk that swarm upon it. 



The contrast between the molluscan life of either side is as 

 marked as in the birds ; in fact, from their slow mode of loco- 

 motion, still more so. Land-birds and sea-birds trespass to a 

 certain extent on each other's ground, but the fresh- and 

 brackish- water molluscs of the sluggish landward channel 

 would perish as surely in the salt water of the seaward side 

 as would the sea-shells of the tidal channel in the fresh 

 water. It is the roadway, acting as a dam between the out- 

 going fresh and the incoming salt water, that has caused this 

 sharp distinction between the inhabitants of these channels, 

 a distinction which would be sharper still were it not for the 

 culverts allowing a certain amount of salt water to mix with 

 the fresh and make it brackish. This mixing adds to the 

 interest of the landward channel, for brackish water has its 

 own peculiar fauna and flora. The Mollusca of the landward 

 channel are : Potamojiyrgus antipodarum (common alike in 

 fresh and brackish water) ; P. cumingiani (in Hawke's Bay 

 found only in brackish water, but reported a fresh- water shell 

 in some localities) ; and P. pupoides (found only in brackish 

 water). The Crustacea consist of great numbers of sand- 

 hoppers {Gammarus ?), both in and about the water, with 

 slaters (Oniscus) equally abundant on the dry land. The 

 channels and mud-flats on the harbour side have a popula- 

 tion that must be in or about more or less pure salt water. 

 The Mollusca are : Potamides nigra and bicarinata, Cominella 

 maculata and ftmerea, Monodonta cethiops, AmpJdbola avel- 



