THE INVASION FROM THE NORTH 341 



opportunity of reminding the public that they were not responsible for 

 the introduction of linnets, sparrows, and larks." In fifteen years, 

 therefore, the sparrow had travelled nearly two hundred miles through 

 an uninhabited waste, had invaded the settled portion of Hawke's 

 Bay, and had even begun to follow up tracks leading away from that 

 district. 



A chief reason for the choice of man's highway as his route of 

 migration may be found in the sparrow's relation to and reliance on man. 

 Passer domesticus is his name, and passer domesticus is his nature. 

 Of all wild creatures that utilise our roads in New Zealand, none take 

 advantage of them in so great a measure as the sparrow. He knows, 

 perhaps instinctively, certainly through the experience of the older birds, 

 that it is by the work of man's hands his race principally thrives ; that it 

 is man who provides for him shelter plantations, building sites, and food. 

 The man-built road by which he moves is indeed in itself a provision 

 house. There are to be found on it horse-droppings containing un- 

 digested oats, foodstuff thrown down by travellers, wheat, barley, and 

 grass seed fallen from sacks. On either side of its white sinuous line, so 

 conspicuous from above, so markedly dissimilar to surrounding surfaces, 

 extend tilled earth and land in crop. Like the bee-bird, which guides 

 the hunter to the hive, the sparrow in striking and following up a 

 road foreknows the benefits that will accrue to him. Maybe in the 

 neighbourhood of townships, between village and village, the sight of 

 travelling sparrows is too common to excite remark ; they are merely 

 specimens of the most common bird in the country. On the far inland 

 up-country roads of New Zealand, however, where ten or fifteen miles 

 may intervene between homestead and homestead, travelling parties 

 cannot but excite attention. During autumn it is impossible on the 

 roads of the interior not to observe and not to wonder over these roving 

 bands moving in search of winter quarters. It is hardly too much to 

 say that there is developing in the sparrow something in the nature of 

 an annual change of residence a summering in the country, a return 

 during winter to a town, to a village, at least to a large farm- 

 steading. 



The accompanying section of map will serve better than any 

 description to show the nature of the countryside traversed by the 

 migrant sparrow and the marvellous results of half a century's human 

 toil. The " natives " and " wandering natives " are now our exceeding 



