204 TUTIRA 



at Norsewood, in the " Seventy-mile bush," he recollects pigeons so plenti- 

 ful that, on certain favourite perching trees, their weight was sufficient 

 to break down the smaller boughs. In the Tutira woods there were, 

 besides the larger birds, thousands of wax-eye, warblers, and fantails. 

 The rivers and lakes were as plentifully stocked : the cormorant tribe 

 had not been then mercilessly persecuted. Tutira lake bore on its 

 bosom a fleet of eight or nine hundred papango, widgeon (Fuligula 

 Novce Zealandice). 



The fauna of Tutira will not detain us long. It was in the 'eighties 

 represented by one species of bat. 



Within the hollow boles of certain dead pines several small colonies 

 existed at that time ; later, when this timber was felled for firewood, 

 bats became very scarce. The last I remember to have noticed used 

 to fly at dusk about Harry Young's cottage, built in the early 'nineties. 1 



Proceeding now to the avifauna, I shall hazard a sketch of its 

 future. Not very many species will fail to survive, though only in 

 a countryside so broken by cliff' and bog could so pleasant a prophecy 

 be risked. The run has been so planned by Providence that the utmost 

 industry of man cannot completely mar it. No farming, happily, can 

 plane away cliffs or fill up gorges. So broken and so rugged must the 

 surface of the station always remain, that twenty-six or twenty-eight out 

 of thirty breeding species will continue to propagate their kind. Nor 

 will species that disappear do so for the reasons so often assigned ; they 

 are not less vigorous than their acclimatised rivals, they will neither be 

 ousted by imported species or annihilated by imported vermin. Much 

 has been written about the inability of New Zealand birds to withstand 

 the competition of the new-comers ; their disappearance has been pre- 

 dicted on account of defective morphology. If this be indeed the case, 

 then other qualities more than atone for such structural deficiency. 2 



Another reason assigned for the disappearance of the natives is 

 inability to compete with alien breeds in regard to food -supply. The 



1 In more recent times I have come across bats at Waikaremoana about 1908, in the 

 forests of the Motu in 1912, in certain islands south of New Zealand in 1913, in Little Barrier 

 in 1919. 



2 I have seen the frail-looking fantail hawking nonchalantly for insects in a deluge that 

 was killing the homestead sparrows, quail, pheasants, and other aliens wholesale. The fact 

 is, that our imported birds are not bred to stand from thirty to seventy hours of tropical 

 downpour, driven before a violent, sometimes an icy gale. In these storms species whose 

 forebears have not been accustomed to face seven, fourteen, and twenty inches in three con- 

 secutive ceaseless days' rainfall, perish in great numbers. 



