Drummond. — On Introduced Birds. 233 



intruder and a greedy nuisance, and its company was found to 

 be not half as desirable as had been anticipated. 



The acclimatisation of nearly all the other small birds was 

 the object of the same keen interest. The fact that the familiar 

 shrill note of the robin redbreast was heard in Hagley Park, 

 Christchurch, in 1880 was carefully recorded; and when a single 

 nightingale, which had come out with the robins, died through 

 an unnatural moult, deep regret was felt far and wide. The 

 acclimatisation of both robin redbreast and the nightingale was 

 unsuccessful in Cimterbury, but the failure may be attributed 

 to the fact that they were not given a good chance. An attempt 

 to introduce the robin at West Taieri also failed. 



Some of the birds spread from one district to another. Ii\ 

 that way, Canterbury got from Otago its cirl-buntings and gold- 

 finches, and some of its starlings, which were rather rare in Can- 

 terbury in 1880, but were very abundant there ten years later. 

 The first were liberated in Dunedin in 1867, and in both Otago 

 and Southland they are present in great numbers. The black- 

 birds and the goldfinches have covered an extraordinarily wide 

 area, having taken up their residence on the lonely Auckland 

 Islands, three hundred miles south of the mainland. The red- 

 poll, on the other hand, is almost confined to North Canterbury 

 and the country along the sea-coast of Otago, but it is found in 

 a few northern districts. At first the song-thrush did not succeed 

 anywhere except at Cheviot, between Christchurch and Kaikoura, 

 but it is now found all over the colony. I have been able to 

 obtain absolutely no trace of the Java sparrow, which was intro- 

 duced into Nelson and Auckland, or of the grass-parrakeet, 

 introduced into Canterbury. The bullfinch was liberated in 

 Nelson, but I have heard nothing further about it, except from 

 Mr. H. Guthrie- Smith, of Tutira, Hawke's Bay, who says that he 

 has seen it in his district, while another correspondent says he 

 saw one at Kissington, another district in Hawke's Bay. 



The Sparrow. 



The case against the sparrow has been made out so often 

 and so strongly that it is not necessary for me to state it in general 

 terms here. The bird's troubles began about 1730, when Frede- 

 rick the Great of Prussia caught a few sparrows eating some of 

 his favourite fruit. He immediately placed a price on the 

 head of each sparrow in his kingdom, ordered a crusade against 

 the whole finch family, and set about the work of extermina- 

 tion with the same heaity goodwill that he brought to bear upon 

 his troubles with the powers and principalities around him. 

 At the end of two years he found that his trees were bare of either 

 leaves or fruit, but were alive with caterpillars. He retracted 



