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plants whicli lifis been introduced is qnite a.notlier 

 affair. I need not now go into the very serious errors 

 which have been made by ardent acclimatiers in in- 

 troducing what they believed to be of great benefit, 

 but which afterwards proved to be of the most serious 

 inconvenience and loss to the human inhabitants, be- 

 yond mentioning that in some plac« in ISTew Zealand 

 the English rabbit lias been so destructive as to starve 

 out the sheep, and every effort has been made to get 

 rid of it, even to the extent of introducing its natural 

 enemies of the genus mustela, — and in Australia a 

 patriotic Scotchman introduced the Thistle, which in- 

 creased to such an extent, as to cause the Legislature 

 to pass a law whereby every owner of land was obliged 

 to destroy this enblem of Scotland where he found it 

 growing ! ! 



My object was to protect the native birds which 

 are I fear doomed to extermination unless an effort 

 such as I proposed is exerted in their favour. 



The first on the list was the " Mangeur de Poules." 

 It is quite true that this bird does occasionally kill a 

 chicken, but its principal food is rats, mice, but above 

 all grass-hoppers, the latter you know do an immense 

 amount of damage, and the " Mangeur de Ponies," 

 were it protected would I feel sure kill a great quan- 

 tity of these noxious insects. This species is found 

 only in this island, belonging as it does to the genus 

 Tinnunculns, it is the shortest winged of all, in com- 

 parison to its si^>e, and is another instance of how nil 



