334 TUTIRA 



stupid to take cover, they could be seen hirpling about the run pursued 

 by their relentless enemies. 1 



Allusion has already been made to the disgust felt at the freeing, 

 firstly, of rabbits, and secondly, of weasels, in the Wairarapa. It was an 

 outrage that any individual or local body should have been allowed 

 to attempt to correct a blunder by a crime. The feeling in Hawke's 

 Bay was evinced in the resolution as I recollect it, for the minutes of 

 the Society are missing proposed and passed with ferocious unanimity, 

 that a guinea a head and guineas were not then as now to be gathered 

 from every manuka bush should be given "for every head of vermin 

 dead or alive." No paper resolutions, however, can stay a plague once 

 introduced ; harm of this sort done cannot be undone. 



Weasels, stoats, and ferrets were bred and liberated at Carterton, 

 the first-named thriving on a great scale and quickly overrunning the 

 countryside. "At least before 1901 " my then neighbour, John Moore of 

 Rakamoana, noticed weasels on his property. By 1901 they had reached 

 Tangoio, by 1902 a specimen had been seen on Tutira. 



I was then one of the three members who represented the Mohaka 

 Biding of the Wairoa County Council. The township of Wairoa, where, 

 once a month, the Council met, lay thirty miles northward from Tutira ; 

 a brother then possessed a farm near Gisborne, seventy miles from 

 Wairoa ; there, during the early and middle 'nineties, I was a frequent 

 guest ; in search for bush-land for my younger brothers, I had occasion 

 to visit districts thirty and forty miles inland and sixty and eighty 

 miles north of Gisborne. Between Tutira and Wairoa, therefore, and 

 between Wairoa and Gisborne, I may say I had an intimate knowledge 

 of roads made and in the making; northwards of Gisborne I knew 

 something of them personally and more through observers acting on 

 my behalf. During ten or twelve seasons, in fact, I was cognisant of 

 the progress of aliens birds and animals over a distance not far short 

 of 150 miles north of the station. Excellent chances were thus afforded 

 of following the progress of the weasel movement. 



Prior to their arrival at Tutira, during their approach through the 

 southern settled districts of Hawke's Bay, terrible tales of the murder 

 of young lambs, of the biting of babies and grown folk, of rape of hen- 



1 In South Canterbury I have seen a hare, dazed with bufferings, continue to follow for 

 quarter or half an hour an open road, when within a few yards a gorse hedge, running parallel, 

 afforded perfect cover and protection. 



