22 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



made to save them. Zoologically this region is 

 perhaps the most interesting in the world. It 

 contains many species and types unknown else- 

 where, many of them archaic forms, relics of a 

 once perhaps dominant fauna replaced by more 

 highly specialised forms, and only preserved to us 

 at all by that isolation which has eventually 

 wrought their doom. Not only have these species 

 been directly destroyed by man, but the sense- 

 less practice of " acclimatisation " has here been 

 pursued in all its crass stupidity. Man by his 

 silly meddling methods, and his tampering with 

 that balance which nature so delicately established 

 and kept true, has worked sad havoc amongst 

 indigenous species. By way of illustration : first 

 rabbits were transported to the Antipodes, and then, 

 when they became a pest, — as was long foreseen 

 by naturalists, — ferrets, stoats, and weasels were 

 introduced as a futile attempt to exterminate them. 

 But these predatory creatures, instead of materially 

 lessening the rodent plague, attacked the helpless 

 fauna, especially the flightless birds, with results 

 that can only possibly end in the complete extinc- 

 tion of these interesting forms. This introduction 

 of exotic species, where successful, almost invariably 

 ends sooner or later in disaster to some members of 



