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CHAPTER XXXVII. 



RECONSIDERATIONS. 



BEFORE proceeding to the consideration of certain aspects of migration, 

 it will be convenient to clear the air of misconceptions as to the effect 

 on aliens of importation and acclimatisation. Not infrequently it has 

 been assumed that in some measure capture, confinement, and the 

 manipulation of man has altered, not the nature of the specimens 

 captured that is likely enough but the nature of the offspring born 

 of them ; that, free in a new land, the trammels of civilisation still cling 

 to and hamper their country-bred descendants. Such a belief would 

 largely detract from the interest attaching to the journeyings of the 

 many aliens that have passed through Tutira. It is not true ; to the 

 animals themselves, and indeed in 

 the final result, the sails of a 

 ship are no more than a pro- 

 longed gale, the deck of a steamer 

 no more than a drifting timber 

 mass, a floe, a fragment of sud ; 

 whether blown from their quarters 

 by stress of weather, and borne 

 abroad by currents of air, or 

 whether trapped, railed to port, 

 and shipped over thousands of 

 miles, their descendants start level The Wax-eye. 



in the race of life. 



The wax-eye (Zosterops ccerulescens), actually seen to have arrived 

 on the Mahia by the Bishop of Waiapu, and the sparrow, known to 

 have been liberated from cages at Auckland, have each arrived in 

 New Zealand since its proclamation as a British possession. In a 



