THE INVASION FROM THE NORTH 345 



great storms of three or four days' duration which, at intervals, past 

 over the run. During one such gale, registering just under a foot and 

 a half of rain in three sequent days, nearly every sparrow on the 

 station perished ; that any at all survived was owing to the ingenuity 

 and adaptability of the race. On the afternoon of the third day of 

 rain, a considerable number not only took refuge in the fowl-house, 

 but actually ensconsed themselves amongst the feathers of the great 

 silly Buff Orpingtons, broody on their nests or occupied in laying eggs. 



The blackbird (Turdus merulct,) was liberated by the Auckland 

 Acclimatisation Society in '67. Its naturalisation was at once success- 

 ful, its increase in numbers immediate. Then there occurs a great 

 blank in the history of the bird, a gap I have tried in vain to bridge. 

 Times were very difficult, wars and rumours of wars, troubles of a 

 hundred kinds pressed heavily on country settlers in particular. As can 

 be imagined, there was little leisure for observation, for records, or for 

 the amenities of life generally. At any rate, nothing is known of the 

 blackbird until after many years it reappears scores of miles distant 

 from its original site of liberation. We can but surmise the early stages 

 of its long journey by elimination of lines obviously not pursued, and by 

 the locality of its reappearance. 



The blackbird, like the sparrow at an earlier date, shied off the 

 poor lands immediately north of Auckland. The Great South Koad, 

 that lane of light cut through fern and forest which had allured the 

 highway-loving sparrow, offered no inducement. Neither, apparently, 

 did the species travel in a southerly direction down the west coast of 

 New Zealand. It must have proceeded in an easterly direction to have 

 been able eventually to re-emerge at Waiapu ; we can be sure of one 

 thing only, that the line taken was the line of least resistance. The 

 species had the choice of the three natural routes of movement already 

 named river-bed, hill-top, and coast. The river-bed route certainly 

 was not followed. From start at Auckland to finish at Waiapu through- 

 out the whole of the way every stream and river flowed at right angles 

 to it. The hill-top route offered as little encouragement. To begin 

 with, there was no great natural backbone range such as had guided the 

 red-deer and the rabbit northwards. Such chains of hills as did exist 

 were broken and separate one from another, a mere jumble of rounded 

 tops ; one and all, moreover, were densely clothed with forest or with 

 fern or scrub. There was no scrap of open ground for alighting, for 



