410 INFLUENCES OF CULTIVATION 



having forsaken for the nonce the insects of the cultivated 

 ground for the " ticks " parasitic on the animal. In this same 

 category must be placed many introduced animals such as 

 the Common Pheasant, which, first brought from the banks 

 of the Phasis in Asia Minor, has had to satisfy itself with 

 the strange products of our western lands. And what of the 

 pests of our food and stored goods the Meal Worm, 

 hateful larva of a Beetle (Tenebrio molitor\ the Flour 

 Mite (Aleurobius), the Biscuit Beetle (Anobium paniceuni] 

 whose larvae, as sailors well know, riddle the biscuits carried 

 on long voyages, the Cheese Mite (Tyroglyphus], the Clothes 

 Moths (Tineidae) which destroy clothing, tapestry, furs and 

 wool, the " Book Worm," a Scolytid Beetle, whose curious 

 habit has earned it the learned name of Hypothenemiis eru- 

 ditus, the still more curious Tobacco Beetle (Lasioderma 

 testacea], the .grubs and adults of which devour cigarettes 

 or any other form of prepared tobacco and how many more ? 

 Surely the ways and inventions of man have modified the 

 feeding habits of these to no small degree. 



Yet still more marked is the break with custom notice- 

 able in such creatures as forsake a vegetarian for a carni- 

 vorous, or a carnivorous for a vegetarian diet. Of these the 

 most notorious is that dull olive-green parrot, with red under- 

 wing, streaked with blue and yellow as it flies the Kea 

 (Nestor notabilis}, bird of the solitudes of the great snowy 

 mountains of New Zealand. It is chiefly nocturnal in habit, 

 and before man tempted it from the way of uprightness, it 

 depended mainly on the berries of the trees and shrubs which 

 grow in the sheltered gullies of the hills. Now it has acquired 

 the despicable habit of settling on the back of a living Sheep 

 and digging with its sharp beak through skin and flesh until 

 it reaches and devours the succulent fat encasing the kidney. 

 As many as 200 Sheep have been killed in a single night on 

 a station at I*ake Wanaka through these cruel attacks. It 

 has been surmised that the Kea learned its gruesome habit 

 through alighting, as does the Starling, on the backs of Sheep, 

 in order to eat the parasites abounding there, and that by 

 chance, perhaps in following the burrowing maggots of some 

 fly, it happened upon the dainty concealed in the living 

 flesh. 



This direction of change, however, from vegetarian to 



