26 Transactions. — Zoology. 



ing the ground, and then in chasing the bird along the creek- 

 bottom, where it could travel faster tban its pursuer.' 



This note is interesting in itself, and, moreover, shows that 

 this species is still plentiful, in the Rangitikei district at any 

 rate. I have always known the male birds fight vigorously 

 for their rights ; but in Mr. Wilson's district they appear to 

 have a recognised territorial partition. Birds that are de- 

 veloping so much intelligence surely deserve a better fate 

 than to be collected by a naturalist or consigned to the Maori 

 pot. 



But the Woodhen fights on very unequal terms with its new 

 enemies — stoats and weasels. That the introduced carnivora 

 continue to do untold mischief is beyond question. In the 

 New Zealand Herald I find the following paragraph on this 

 subject: "Scarcely a day passes but what we hear some 

 news of the depredations by weasels in one pai't or other of 

 the district. Several deaths among sheep have been reported 

 in the Hautapu district lately, and on Thursday last Mr. Ward 

 lost three fine ewes. The deaths in all cases were attributed 

 to vi'easels."* 



* My own views as to the absolute wickedness of introducing these 

 predatory animals into this fair land of ours are too well known to need 

 repetition. But I should like to quote here what Professor Newton has 

 to say on the subject : " In respect of extermination leading immediately 

 to extinction, the present condition of the New Zealand fauna is one 

 that must grieve to the utmost every ornithologist who cares for more 

 than the stuffed skin of a bird on a shelf. In the fauna of that region 

 the class Aves holds the highest rank, and, though its mightiest members 

 had passed away before the settlement of white men, what was left of 

 its avifauna had features of interest unsurpassed by any others. It was, 

 indeed, long before these features were appreciated, and then by but few 

 ornithologists, yet no sooner was their value recognised than it was 

 found that nearly all of their possessors were rapidly expiring, and the 

 destruction of the original avifauna of this important colony, so thriving 

 and so intellectual, is being attended by circumstances of extraordinary 

 atrocity. . . . Allowing for a considerable amount of exaggeration 

 on the part of the sheep-owners, no one can doubt that the rabbit plague 

 has inflicted a serious loss on the colony. Yet a remedy may be worse 

 than a disease, and the so-called remedy applied in this case has been 

 of a kind that every true naturalist knew to be most foolish — namely, 

 the importation from England and elsewhere and liberation of divers 

 carnivorous mammals — polecats or ferrets, stoats, and weasels. Two 

 wrongs do not make a right, even at the Antipodes, and from the most 

 authentic reports it seems, as any zoologist of common-sense would have 

 expected, that the bloodthirsty beasts make no greater impression upon 

 the stock of rabbits in New Zealand than they do in the Mother-country, 

 while they find an easy prey in the heedless and harmless members of 

 the aboriginal fauna, many of whom are incapable of flight, so that their 

 days are assuredly numbered. Were these indigenous forms of an 

 ordinary kind their extirpation might be regarded with some degree of 

 indifference ; but, unfortunately, many of them are extraordinary forms 

 — the relics of perhaps the oldest fauna now living. Opportunities for 

 learning the lesson they teach have been but scant, and they are vanish- 



