OTHER ALIENS ON TUTIRA PRIOR TO 1882 317 



passes and moved along the summits trodden by him so many seasons 

 before. I have always felt an interest in this exiled deer, in his 

 wonderful trek, his solitary existence, his pathetic affection for his 

 unresponsive neighbours the horses, his banishment from kith and kin, 

 and lastly, his tragic fate tangled by his antlers among supple-jack 

 and slowly starved to death. 



Until the 'nineties no other deer reached Tutira. A hind was then 

 seen on the station, but by that date the local herd of red-deer 

 liberated in the highlands of Hawke's Bay had been established ; the 

 wanderer had strayed but fifty or sixty miles over open, well-roaded 

 country. Twice since that time a single deer has been on Tutira for 

 brief periods. 



The line of the stag's journey, it is hardly necessary to state, is 

 merely conjectural. We can only surmise that he did not for reasons 

 already given travel by the coast ; that he could not have travelled 

 through breadths of forest land, dark dense jungle, seamed, moreover, 

 with ravines running at right angles to the line of march. The route 

 suggested is that of general likelihood, compiled from bushmen, shepherds, 

 and surveyors, each wise in the lore of his particular beat. 



There have, in all likelihood, been many liberations in New Zealand 

 of black swan (Cygnus atratus). The earliest I can hear of were those 

 freed in the 'fifties at Kawau by Sir George Grey. They were imported 

 from Australia, the story goes, to destroy the water-cress, then considered 

 as a menace to some of the New Zealand rivers. It is quite as likely 

 that Sir George acclimatised the breed on sesthetic grounds. Be that as 

 it may, swan cannot have spread fast, for Archdeacon Samuel Williams 

 has told me that they reached Hawke's Bay at any rate, that they 

 became conspicuous only in the 'seventies ; in the early 'eighties I 

 remember them very plentiful in the lagoon whereon Napier South is 

 now built. Swan have always been scarce on Tutira, where there are no 

 suitable feeding-grounds ; a few pair remain for a few days each season. 



Pea-fowl reached Maungaharuru in the 'seventies. Mr MacMahon, 

 for long resident in the district, first as manager of that station and later 

 of Waihua, has told me of a hen which for years lived a solitary life 

 on the former station. Another hen had been resident not far from 

 the Tutira homestead five years before my arrival, and continued to 

 live for another four years in a patch of open bush west of the Natural 

 Paddock hill. A third hen appeared on the run in 1900, and survived 



