320 TUTIRA 



The honey bee was liberated about the same date at the Bay of 

 Islands and at New Plymouth ; probably from the former, Hawke's Bay 

 has been stocked directly or indirectly. The newly-imported insect 

 had no enemies to contend with ; there were no diseases and no com- 

 petitors. The winters of the North Island are brief, or non-existent ; 

 there is no single month of the year when some native shrub or another 

 is not to be found in blossom. Local conditions were extraordinarily 

 favourable too ; portions of eastern Tutira, viewed even from consider- 

 able distances, were during spring-time actually grey with the profusion 

 of white clover-heads. Everywhere then also the purple-headed prickly 

 thistle possessed the land. There was not a hollow tree or crannied 

 limestone rock which in the 'eighties did not contain a hive ; colonies 

 were established even in the open, though from these unsheltered 

 swarms no great store of honey was obtainable, dews and rains diluting 

 the nectar gathered, and washing it from the uncapped cells. 



The exuberant prosperity of the bee has passed away with the dis- 

 appearance of the white clover and the thistle. Few indeed of the 

 hollow crags now harbour colonies. One rock only a vast square 

 projecting from the highest tier of ocean floor on the Racecourse 

 Paddock has never to my knowledge during forty seasons been 

 untenanted. Bees are now again on the increase, owing to ploughing, 

 the use of artificial manures, and consequent revival of white clover. 



Only these few insects, birds, and mammals had reached Tutira 

 before my own occupation of the station ; it was the good fortune of 

 the writer to witness personally a later and greater trek of living things. 



were again come. Poison was of no avail : grain phosphorised, or soaked in strychnine, or 

 soaked in arsenic, was apparently innocuous to these terrible insects. The damage done 

 the utter destruction of grass and crop was a revelation to me ; having witnessed the ruin 

 wrought in a few weeks, it has been easy to sympathise with the demands of early agriculturists 

 for the importation of birds. 



