340 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE INVASION FROM THE NORTH. 



THE policies of the Auckland Acclimatisation Society have been the 

 chief centre of dispersion from which northern aliens have reached 

 Tutira. From the same quarter the Wairoa district has contributed 

 certain species liberated by private enterprise ; a single alien, lastly, has 

 reached us from the neighbourhood of the Thames. 



In October of '82, a month, that is, after our arrival at Tutira, a 

 small flight of sparrows rested for a brief space on the wood-heap, that 

 inevitable adjunct of every primitive homestead in New Zealand. The 

 species had reached the station neither by mountain-top, coast, or river- 

 bed, but by road. They had followed surely one of the most interesting 

 treks in natural history the highway of man through the very heart 

 of the North Island. 



Sparrows were imported and turned out by the Auckland Acclima- 

 tisation Society in '67. Two years later the Society reports : " Sparrows 

 have increased largely, but seem reluctant to go far from home, though 

 stragglers are occasionally met with." A few years later their migration 

 must have begun, for in 76 they were suspected to be at Opepe on the 

 Taupo road. In 77 we find the Hawke's Bay Acclimatisation Society 

 requesting their Committee " to take any necessary steps for the 

 destruction of sparrows said to be in the district," a request, by the way, 

 about as futile as that of King Canute to the flowing tide. In the " late 

 'seventies " sparrows were seen by Mr J. N. Williams at Te Puna. In '80 

 specimens were shot near Hastings ; in '81 they had reached Napier ; by 

 '82 they were present at Tutira. In '84 that is, only seven years after 

 the Hawke's Bay Acclimatisation Society was dubious about the very 

 presence of sparrows in the province this same Society " viewed with 

 considerable alarm the enormous spread of small birds, but took the 



