177 NATURAL HISTORY NOTES IN NEW ZEALAND. 
planted them, ard next morning found that I had exterminated, not 
the sparrows, but every chaflinch in my orchard. That was a sad 
and humiliating day for me, and I never laid poison again. 
Goldfinches prosper in the Colony. They do no harm that I am 
aware of, and I have seen them in flocks on the pastures, not in hun- 
dreds only but in thousands. A typical scene in the Autumn is the 
goldfinch swaying upon a heavy thistle head (C. LancEonaTA) com- 
monly, but erroneously called ‘‘ Scotchman” or Scotch thistle. I 
recall with pleasure the finding of a solitary starling’s nest in 1890. 
Ten years later they were almost as common as sparrows. They 
undoubtedly checked the spread of the New Zealand army worm 
(Mamestra composita), but now fruit-growers are complaining about 
their attacks on fruit. 
Of introduced birds there are only two others to mention—the 
hedge-sparrow and robin. The former, brought to the Colony in 
1885, has made but little progress. Only once did I hear its note in 
the North Island, and never saw the bird ; but in the colder districts 
of Otago I saw and heard several. In 1885 forty robins were 
liberated near Dunedin, and twenty the following year, but, with 
one exception, they have never been seen since. 
Native Brrps.—Though so poor in mammals, New Zealand is, 
or rather was, one of the richest countries in native bird life. Many 
are already extinct, and others, alas! are so diminished in numbers 
that they are surely passing away. 
It is not my intention to dwell upon the extinct birds of New 
Zealand, but my paper would be incomplete without reference to the 
Moa, that gigantic bird which once reigned supreme in these islands, 
and the bones of which have been reconstructed by the late Sir 
Julius Von Haaste, of Christchurch Museum, into a skeleton 12 ft. 
in height. Bones of the Moa were not unfrequently found during 
the clearing of the heavy bush in the neighbourhood of the Sounds 
