346 TUTIRA 



exercise, for food. There were none of the great wind-blows, oases of 

 open ground, naked summits and rockfalls, stepping-stones each of them 

 to further progress, which existed on the mighty Ruahine Range; a 

 warmer, wetter climate clothed every inch of the country in dense jungle. 

 The line of least resistance was the coastal line. Mr J. N. Williams 

 and his brother, the late Bishop of Waiapu, have never doubted but that 

 this was the route followed, that the blackbird after leaving Auckland 

 skirted the coast as far as the Bay of Plenty ; they furthermore believed 

 that then striking inland the blackbird topped the range and followed in 

 a southerly direction the course of the Waiapu river. 1 As to the strike 

 inland, it seems to me improbable that the birds should have crossed 

 the Motu-Mangatu-Maungahamea-Arowhona-Aorangi range, with peaks 

 reaching three, four, and five thousand feet; on the contrary, such a 

 barrier, in my opinion, would be likely to pen them securely to a further 

 stretch of coast. Personally I believe that the blackbird followed the 

 coast line from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty, continued to follow it 

 round East Cape, ultimately reaching the Waiapu river, where speci- 

 mens were first seen, that river happening to flow for part of its course 

 parallel to and at no great distance from the coast ; there at any rate 

 blackbirds were noticed "in the late 'seventies" by Mr J. N. Williams 

 and the Bishop of Waiapu. " About " '87 they were seen by the late Mr 

 John Hunter Brown between Poverty Bay and Wairoa, later at Waihua 

 by Mr MacMahon, and at Tutira in '91 by myself. 



The migratory current, at first a trickle, later increased to a stream. 

 It was not, however, until 1912 that the progeny of the pairs breeding 

 each season on the run seemed to stay. Then at once the increase was 

 marked. 



The history of the thrush (Turdus mitsicus) is the history of the 

 blackbird in duplicate. It was imported by the Auckland Acclimatisa- 

 tion Society at the same date as the blackbird, and like the blackbird, 

 immediately became naturalised. The history of its migration is 



1 It may be that details at one time vivid had somewhat faded from Mr Williams' recol- 

 lection when we first spoke of the matter, and that I may be unaware of some of the minor 

 facts which originally led him to his conclusion. Details, after playing their part in a 

 considered judgment, are apt to be relegated to the shade. In the case, for instance, of the 

 sparrows' trek, I had many times, apropos of acclimatisation generally, heard of their discovery 

 at Waipuna and of the specimens shot at Frimley without the additional item of information 

 that birds " believed to have been sparrows " had been reported as having been seen at the old 

 blockhouse at Opepe, at a period prior to their appearance at Waipuna. It may have hap- 

 pened, therefore, that I am not in possession of the minuthe which led Mr Williams to the 

 conclusion that the blackbird had struck inland. 



