ACCLIMATISATION CENTRES AND MIGRATION ROUTES 323 



Proceeding from this disquisition on New Zealand's acclimatisation 

 in general to our immediate subject, the accompanying map shows the 

 four centres from which animal aliens have reached the run. They 

 are "Wairarapa and Hastings to the south, Auckland and Wairoa to 

 the north. 



For observation of aliens passing north and south, Tutira has 

 occupied an exceptionally fortunate geological situation. Between 

 Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay stretches a broad belt of fertile land 

 running roughly parallel with the coast. This band of limestone and 

 marl country begins, however, to narrow immediately south of the 

 station into a sort of tongue or peninsula. Tutira, in fact, may be 

 considered the terminal portion of a fertile belt that stretches the 

 whole distance from Wairarapa. 



To this belt migrants have clung, repelled by the poorer soils 

 and grassless lands impinging on it from the west. They have, 

 moreover, closed their ranks as the band of good land shrunk in 

 width, and have therefore not only passed through Tutira, but have 

 passed through it in relatively large numbers. Aliens, therefore, 

 moving northwards had perforce to pass through the run. Animals, 

 again, moving southwards, and coming during the last portion of 

 their trek by way of the fertile Waiapu and Poverty Bay districts, 

 have followed likewise the coastal route. For precisely similar reasons 

 to those which, immediately south of Tutira, compelled the concen- 

 tration of northward - moving migrants, about Wairoa has occurred 

 another contraction. Westwards of that district extend large areas 

 of dry hungry lands over which no creature accustomed to such 

 fertility as that of Poverty Bay would be likely to straggle. All 

 southward - moving migrants, too, have passed through Tutira, and, 

 because of their concentration, have passed through it in relatively 

 large numbers. The run, therefore, may be said to have stood in 

 the centre of a double current of aliens some moving south, some 

 moving north; it has been the waist of the sand-glass, through 

 which each grain was bound to flow. 



Before proceeding to relate the history of the different living 

 creatures that have managed to reach Tutira in my day, it will be 



the Moeangiangi that is not possible ; there beyond controversy trout have entered virgin 

 water direct from the ocean. The earliest trout liberated in Hawke's Bay (S. fontinalis) were 

 brought from America in great baths on board one of the paddle steamers that used to ply 

 between the two countries. 



