RED DEER. 31 



shrub. They will not eat birch or beech (Nothofagus), nor celery- 

 pine (Phyllocladus), till other food is exhausted. 



The first specimens appear to have been brought a pair of 

 them to Nelson in 1851 ; but the doe was killed soon after, and 

 the buck, after remaining about Motueka for ten years, joined a 

 lot then introduced. In 1861 a stag and two hinds, presented by 

 Lord Petre from his park in Essex, England, were landed in 

 Nelson. The progeny of these animals increased, and rapidly 

 spread themselves over a great part of the high country in the 

 provincial districts of Nelson and Marlborough. Of late years 

 they have farther spread into North Canterbury and over towards 

 the West Coast. Mr. Hardcastle, who in 1906 wrote a report on 

 the red-deer herds in the country, says, " The heads obtained in 

 Nelson are of a good colour and fairly massive, but compared with 

 those of Wairarapa and Hawea they have not the same average 

 of span or spread. Lord Petre's herd had had no new blood in- 

 troduced into it for many years, so that a particular type of 

 antler had been fixed from which there is no throwing back." 

 According to Mr. Hardcastle, the type of head of the first imported 

 stag continues to persist, and dominates all the deer of the Nelson 

 herd. (In 1900 a herd, descended from Nelson deer, was started 

 in the Lillburn Valley, west of the Waiau River, in Southland.) 



In 1862 a stag and two hinds, presented by the late Prince 

 Consort to Governor Weld, were handed over by him to Dr. Feathers- 

 ton, then Superintendent of the Wellington Province, and were 

 liberated on the property of Mr. Carter, East Taratahi, Wairarapa. 

 They did not stay there long, however, but crossed into the 

 Maungaraki Range, where they rapidly increased. Mr. Hard- 

 castle reported in 1906, " The Wairarapa forest is probably the 

 best-stocked red-deer ground on the globe. On Te Awaite Run, 

 bordering on the east coast, the deer may now be seen in bunches 

 of up to one hundred head. At the beginning of last year it was 

 estimated that there were fully ten thousand head on the station. 

 According to information given in The Field of. the 15th September, 

 1906, the Windsor Park herd, from which the original stock came, 

 has been replenished from English, Scottish, German, and probably 

 Danish stock. The result has produced in the Wairarapa herd 

 stags that are remarkable for their massive antlers, some of which 

 are of the German type, and others again more resembling the 



