AND OTHER BIRDS 5 



years ago our gum lands and ryolite country, 

 our large tracts of pumiceous land, were held to 

 be worthless. In these localities a quarter of a 

 century ago it might at least have been deemed 

 possible for our birds to have remained in peace 

 but for the vermin liberated. The increasing use 

 of manures has changed this belief, and so 

 wonderful have been the effects of fertilizers 

 that it now appears as if almost the whole of the 

 North Island and almost the whole of the South 

 Island would be taken up for agricultural and 

 pastoral purposes; man will have drained all 

 swamps and low lands, and all ploughable sur- 

 faces, however poor originally, will have been 

 fed into productivity by manures. Even the 

 sterile slopes, spurs, and ridges, the high rain- 

 washed flanks of the great ranges, will have been 

 coaxed into carrying the hardier grasses and 

 fodder plants already coming into use. The 

 insatiable appetite for land will swallow almost 

 any kind of soil, and there will remain to the 

 birds an area inconsiderable even in acreage and 

 meagre to the last degree in food supply. Almost 

 all scrub and bush will have been fallen, for, if, 

 even in the palmy days of the squatter and when 

 taxation was light, the great land-holder could 

 hardly bear to leave untouched a score or an 

 hundred fertile acres, what can be expected of the 

 farmer! For five extra blades of cocksfoot he 

 would scalp his parents. 



As bird refuges on the mainland, there 

 remain to be considered only the State 

 Forest Reserves scattered here and there 

 throughout the Colony. Perhaps those in high, 

 cold, wet regions may endure, but smaller areas 

 in open country run enormous risks from fire. A 



