CHAPTER V 



THE DELIBERATE INTRODUCTION 

 OF NEW ANIMALS 



Nature's road must ever be preferr'd ; 

 Reason is here no guide, but still a guard. 



POPE. 



MAN pays little heed to that balance of Nature which has 

 arisen out of centuries of struggle and competition, and 

 which makes the fauna and flora of an old but uncivilized 

 country established and stable. When the immigrant reaches 

 the new country of his hopes, across the ocean, he refuses to 

 take the experiments of Nature for granted, and sometimes 

 forgetting that new soils, new climates, and new associations of 

 living things demand a new outlook and require new treatment, 

 he proceeds to transform the new found land to the pattern of 

 the old. This transformation, which may proceed to such 

 lengths as radically to alter the general aspect of a fauna or 

 a flora, progresses at first mainly by the introduction of 

 plants and animals from the homeland. 



No sooner does man enter upon a new heritage than he 

 endeavours to keep alive the memories of home by surround- 

 ing himself with the familiar flowers, beasts, birds and fishes 

 of the old country, irrespective of their fitness to survive in 

 fresh conditions, or of the fitness of the aboriginal fauna to 

 assimilate them without ill effects. Why else, do you think, 

 did the early immigrants to New Zealand set free in the 

 bush the British Robin Redbreast, the Bullfinch, the Green- 

 finch, the Turtle Dove, the Lapwing and half a dozen other 

 old favourites? Further, the immigrant's amusement must 

 be capered for by the establishment of animals whose sport- 

 ing qualities he knows. So the Trout of Loch Leven has 

 been placed in rivers half the world over, Rabbits and 

 Hares, Pheasants and Partridges, have been transported to 

 Australia and- New Zealand, Blackgame to Newfoundland 



R. - 16 



