THE INVASION FROM THE SOUTH 333 



likely that earlier pairs had been overlooked ; it is improbable that so 

 many nests would have been discovered during the first year of the 

 appearance of a new breed. 



The Australian quail (Syncecus australis) was a private importation 

 of very early date, birds being liberated on Kissington in the 'sixties 

 by Colonel, afterwards Sir George, Whitmore. It did not, however, 

 reach Tutira for more than thirty years. So tardy a spread can be 

 probably ascribed to the uninviting nature of the intervening country, 

 which, until improvements began, was one vast sheet of bracken. Over 

 this inhospitable wilderness, moreover, huge fires raged from time to 

 time, providing the harriers who well understood the significance of 

 the event with a burnt-offering of lizards and small birds. 



Another game-bird, the Californian quail (Callipepla californica), was 

 imported by the Hawke's Bay Provincial Council, and again at a later 

 date by the Hawke's Bay Acclimatisation Society. Californian quail 

 reached Tutira in the middle 'nineties, and although there was at first an 

 increase in their numbers, it was a limited increase and soon ceased. Their 

 advent as game-birds had come, in fact, too late to admit of any great 

 success. The competition of innumerable goldfinches, yellow-hammers, 

 larks, sparrows, and native species, several of which had also increased 

 with the enlarged area of open country consequent on the destruction 

 of bracken, had already affected the insect food-supply ; the Californian 

 quail is now disappearing from the run. 



Hares were brought to Hawke's Bay from the South Island. In 

 '82 they were fairly plentiful on the river-bed country in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Hastings. Eleven years, however, elapsed before the 

 thirty-five miles betwixt that district and Tutira were traversed. 

 Possibly the tendency of scared hares to run in circles has prevented 

 a rapid spread ; on the other hand, this trait had been in some degree 

 neutralised by another the remarkable use by hares of roads and road- 

 cuttings. On the station, shepherds riding at dawn would sometimes 

 strike a hare on one of the narrow cuttings that preceded the completion 

 of the road, and for amusement course it with their collies for hundreds 

 of yards ere the animal would dash off to right or left. The consequence 

 has been that the spread of the hare has been in a peculiar degree 

 governed by chance. 



A third factor in the naturalisation of the breed has been the 

 ceaseless persecution of its vanguard by the native harrier hawk. Too 



