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CHAPTER XXXIII. 



ACCLIMATISATION CENTRES AND MIGRATION ROUTES. 



MANY factors sport, sentiment, and business entered into the 

 jubilation with which the project of acclimatisation was acclaimed 

 in New Zealand. It was the age of enthusiasm : the possibilities of 

 small settlement were then undreamed ; the land was still parcelled out 

 in great estates, whose owners, I daresay, thought of founding families, 

 of game preservation as at home, of fox-hunting, it is a marvel that 

 New Zealand has escaped the importation of the fox, of all the 

 jolly old-time country life that for good and evil is passing away 

 from the world. The protests of those in England whose comparative 

 knowledge and experience could properly appreciate the dangers 

 ahead were unheeded. If heard at all, they were passed over as 

 the remonstrances of persons without practical knowledge of conditions 

 obtaining in the Antipodes. 



Yet, if not a failure, acclimatisation in New Zealand has not at 

 any rate been an outstanding success. 



In justice to its founders and supporters, however, it must be con- 

 ceded that failure has in some degree been consequent on an alteration 

 in the social fabric which could hardly have been foreseen. Game 

 preservation is an abomination to a democracy each of whom is a 

 freeholder, and each of whom, not unnaturally, desires to shoot his 

 own game equally naturally to shoot it without delay lest it cross 

 into his neighbour's territory. Each bird, in fact, is treated as were 

 those coveys of grouse found in pre - driving days too near the 

 marches of a moor slain to save them. 



Then, too, another outcome of close settlement a multiplicity of 

 cats and dogs spells death to game. It is probable that deer-stalking 

 is in the not far-distant future also doomed. The finest heads park 



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