INTRODUCTION. 9 



found that the birds and beasts were very different from those 

 they had known in the Homeland from which they had come. They 

 also noticed that there were very few animals or plants which were 

 desirable for food, or which were likely to furnish food to later 

 arrivals; and Cook was sufficiently far-seeing to recognize that 

 before long many of his countrymen would come to these Islands 

 t-it her to visit them or to stay. These early European voyagers 

 found that the Maoris, whom they met for the first time, and who 

 were far more numerous than they are now, had no domestic 

 animals except dogs, which they kept for food. They also found 

 that a rat was very common in many parts; but they met with no 

 other four-footed animals, except, probably, lizards. 



So Cook and those who followed him thought it would be a good 

 thing for the country, and for the Europeans who might come later 

 to live in it, if the best and most useful animals and plants which 

 occurred in Britain were brought to New Zealand. They were, then, 

 the pioneers in starting the introduction of European forms by 

 giving the Natives pigs, goats, fowls, and seeds of several plants. 

 Other animals and plants were brought here from time to time, and 

 as white people increased in number, and gradually occupied much 

 of the land and brought it into cultivation, these introduced forms 

 in certain localities soon displaced many of the native forms. All 

 the thickly peopled and settled parts of New Zealand are much 

 more like parts of Europe as far as animals and plants are con- 

 cerned than they are like the New Zealand which Cook knew. The 

 reason is that wherever white men go to settle they take with them 

 certain animals and plants, which they keep and cultivate. 

 Besides, as already said, a great many things come into the new 

 country with the immigrants things which are not wanted, per- 

 haps, but whicli follow white men wherever they go and these 

 things frequently become very common. We call the plants 

 "weeds" because they grow where they are not wanted. But we 

 have no name for the uninvited animals mostly small which thus 

 come into the country, until perhaps they become very common, 

 and then we just call them " pests " nasty hurtful things to be 

 destroyed and got rid of. 



Now, if we are going to study the natural history of the country 

 both its native (or indigenous) and introduced animals and 

 plants we must put away from our minds the idea of " weeds " 



