GILLIES.. Notes on some Changes in the Fauna of Otago. 807 
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care could be taken so to conduct observations as to ensure results which 
could be tabulated with all the accuracy of numerical precision. But in 
the nature of the case this is impossible. We have changes going on now 
under our notice. Old forms gradually passing away, and new ones coming 
on the scene in their place, but who is to foretell what is doomed and what 
is to endure? No doubt much may be done and is doing with a view to the 
future. But the irrecallable past is gone without the data being preserved 
which now we wish we had, and it only remains for us to save the shreds 
and patches which linger in the memories of old settlers. These must 
necessarily be imperfect, but, as the only thing left to us, may not wholly 
be valueless, and to the younger generation growing up amidst the new 
order of things cannot be entirely without interest. It may be, too, that 
the following few scraps culled from my own experience and memory may 
be the means of inciting others possessed of fuller and better materials to 
put them on record in a simple form for what they are worth. Who knows, 
if this hint is acted upon, but we may yet have a record of the past of our 
fauna and flora as complete as I am quite certain it would be startling in 
comparison with the present. 
I shall first refer to changes in our fauna, and, as the most practical 
and direct way of doing so, shall relate some facts connected with some that 
have passed or almost passed away—beginning with insects, then referring 
to a few birds, and then to the only mammals existing as wild in my 
memory; referring at the same time to some new forms that have been 
introduced and are now prevalent everywhere. I shall then pass on to 
such marked cases in the flora of the country as have come under my own 
notice, treating them in the same way. I shall then, if I have time, discuss 
some of the causes which have operated in producing the results referred to, 
and try to indieate in what directions our observations and efforts should be 
directed in future. —— 
One of the greatest insect pests in Otago twenty-five years ago was what 
was called the common blow-fly—a large blue-bottle fly. It swarmed 
everywhere, and people now-a-days will hardly: believe the trouble and 
annoyance which it gave to the early settlers. No woollen material could | 
safely be left lying at rest for even a few minutes without running the risk 
of having the small white eggs of this fly deposited in large numbers and 
fixed in the fibres of the material by the glutinous envelope surrounding 
them. A working man took off his blue serge shirt and threw it down 
carelessly (and every man in those days was a working man and wore a 
blue shirt), in a very short time when he went to pick it up he would 
discover to his annoyance and disgust that it was fly-blown, and not very 
long after he would find it a crawling mass of maggots. If in his fear of the 
