THE FUTURE OF NATIVE AVIFAUNA 207 



flax, nigger-head, raupo, and rank sedges. Without gorge or bog such 

 narrow belts of wild land would be of little avail ; as additions to 

 natural refuge-grounds they will prove invaluable. These fenced-off 

 strips, moreover, will be kept inviolate from fire on account of the 

 fencing material, strainers, posts, and battens of wood. 



Farming, moreover, in such lands as those of central Tutira will 

 entail feeding of the ground. To obtain a return, marl, artificials, and 

 lime will have to be supplied to its hungry though responsive soils. 

 Of these manures a proportion will percolate beyond the limits of the 

 fencing. -Growth will be stimulated in the narrow strips of waste land 

 as in the fields without. Reeds and water herbage will shoot up more 

 tall and luxurious, manuka and heaths will put forth a stronger growth. 

 Stimulation to plant life also means in the long-run stimulation to 

 animal life, a bigger hatch of insects, an enhanced crop of land snails, 

 grubs, and caterpillars. 1 This involuntary assistance to the avifauna of 

 the station, though less striking and conspicuous, will prove of more 

 importance than the planting of shelter-belts, orchards, and shrubberies 

 about the homesteads to be ; such cover is too open, too much overrun 

 by cats, by dogs, by rats. 



In the light of such vital factors in race maintenance as food- 

 supply and breeding accommodation, we can proceed to consider the 

 future of an avifauna, whose vicissitudes and disabilities may chance 

 to suggest analogies to other readers in other lands. 



Species that have during my day nested 

 on the run may be divided into four lots 

 those that have actually been attracted to 

 the place by novel conditions ; those that 

 have more or less adapted themselves to 

 changed environment ; those to whom 

 change would have been fatal but for 

 the broken nature of the run ; and 



lastly, those to whom changed Conditions Nest and Eggs of Banded Dottrel 



have been fatal. 



The three species that have been attracted to the station by 

 changed conditions are the Banded Dottrel (Charadrius bicinctus), 



1 Much in the same way as fish are attracted to the vicinity of shaggeries where seaweeds 

 are stimulated by guano, and where, consequently, the marine life upon which fish feed is most 

 abundant. 



