322 TUTIRA 



type have hitherto been obtained from lands that cannot be, or 

 cannot much longer be, held in large areas. Elsewhere, into tracts 

 of poor high country where indeed deer might subsist without 

 detriment to the State, the rabbit has of late penetrated, and with 

 him the rabbiter. These men know the countryside as they know 

 their huts. They possess in full the sporting tastes of their fellow- 

 mortals. I am given to understand that the best heads disappear 

 before the season opens, or instantly afterwards. Rangers are few 

 and far between, and fines for poaching inadequate even were evidence 

 forthcoming. It is true there are areas still free of rabbits ; but 

 it is to be feared that, sooner or later, these regions too will be 

 overrun, that once more in the wake of the rabbit the rabbiter 

 will follow, that in any case the deer will be eaten out, that the 

 best trophies and the glorious loneliness of stalking will be gone. 



There can be no two opinions as to the importation of vermin 

 such as stoats, weasels, polecats, and ferrets. Only the value of the 

 avifauna brought to New Zealand for sentimental and utilitarian 

 reasons needs to be considered. 



On this topic much can be said for and against acclimatisation. 

 It is true that some of the birds are already troublesome, and it is 

 likely that others may become so. It must nevertheless not be for- 

 gotten that good has been done as well as evil ; that if, for example, 

 the sparrow takes a proportion of the farmer's ripened grain, it is 

 but a fraction of what was robbed from the pioneer by plagues of 

 caterpillar, grasshopper, and black crickets. Only those who are 

 aware of the enormous depredations of insects in the early days of 

 New Zealand agriculture can properly adjust the balance. 



The importation of the Salmo tribe seems, although little or 

 nothing is known of their habits in the sea, to have been a genuine 

 success. 1 



1 Compared with results obtainable elsewhere in New Zealand, rod-fishing in Hawke'e 

 Bay is not first-rate, the great floods that now and again pass over the province destroying the 

 ova and drowning the trout. This deprivation from an angler's point of view may, 

 however, be perhaps remedied. There are indications that trout are coasting the shores and 

 already in a small way running up the rivers. In the Waikoau, for instance, fish which are 

 practically sea trout in their silvery appearance and red flesh have been taken five miles inland. 

 These fish are quite dissimilar to the river fish, good as is their condition also. The little 

 Moeangiangi stream reaching the sea two or three miles north of the Waikoau may also be 

 cited. It has never be*n stocked, yet up it trout from the Pacific are running, trout 

 of three and four pounds' weight. Possibly in the Waikoau it might have been thought that 

 river trout washed out in floods had taken to the salt water and later returned to spawn. In 



