206 Transactions. — Zoology. 



result, for the whole series have to be constantly gone over 

 again and again. So the already depleted profits from the 

 land are further lessened by costs of fines and expenses in- 

 curred, by maintenance of a large staff of men and dogs, 

 purchase of poisoned grain, fencing, kc. If the weasel is not 

 speedily imported to Hawke's Bay, a large proportion of our 

 settlers, who are now barely making a liWng, will have to 

 throw up their holdings. 



The Mount Nicholas Station, Otago, consisting of 75,000 

 acres of mountain-pasture, when in my occupation, easily car- 

 ried twenty thousand well-fed sheep. Within some four years 

 after the first j-abbit was killed the then owners were practi- 

 cally ruined by rabbits. I saw in the newspapers some two 

 years ago that the run only carried two thousand sheep, and 

 the occupier, Mr. Nichols, was so harassed by fines inflicted 

 on account of rabbits that he petitioned to be relieved from 

 the lease of the land, which was not granted, and in despair. 

 I believe, he cleared out to some other country. 



In regard to spreading bladder-fluke by the aid of dogs, to 

 me it seems just as probable that ultimately sheep might be 

 affected, though perhaps not by that special disease itself, but 

 one kindred to it as it were, in a different guise, for these low 

 forms of organism appear to change their character according 

 to what host they occupy ; though how scientists can witli 

 certainty trace them in their variotis phases and transmigra- 

 tions as they alternately occupy animals, snails, earthworms, 

 other animals, and so on, I am at a loss to understand. 

 Sm'ely it can be only guesswork at the best. Years ago a rela- 

 tive, a medical man in large practice, wrote to me : "I do not 

 know the disease^scab — you speak of in your sheep, but you 

 should be careful of your dogs, for the tapeworm from the dog 

 ^^^ll cause fluke amongst sheep." 



The fluke in Australia, though perhtxps Jiot the form he 

 alluded to, is generally the result of wet pastures. Formerly 

 we in New Zealand bought imported merino ewes from Aus- 

 tralia. I had some at Mount Nicholas, which had lived on 

 those dry hills some four years after leaving Sidney. Some 

 of these, when fat, were occasionally killed for mutton. 

 Speaking one day to a shearer who had knowledge of the 

 fluke, he, to my surprise, said, '■ I will show you some." As 

 luck would have it, one of these Sydney ewes was being killed 

 at the time. The man cut open a main gall-duct on the liver, 

 pressed his finger along the duct, when, floating in the juice 

 of the gall, came veritable flukes of different sizes, the largest 

 fully three-fourths of an inch long, and resembling greatly in 

 shape an ordinary flounder or flatfish. Here was evidence of 

 the parasitic cause of the disease continuing to inhabit its 

 host apparently for years, and propagate its kind without 



