810 Transactions.—Zoology. 
formed by their dragging the carcass literally black with millions of blow- 
flies, and not one on any other part of the ground or herbage.” Mr. 
Murison remarks :—‘‘ Camp ovens were almost the only hiding-place for 
cooked meat which were secure from the attacks of the blow-fly.” 
No person now can have any conception how numerous and unavoid- 
able these universal pests were. One strange and most fortunate thing 
was that these flies never attacked or laid their eggs in the wool, or any 
part of the living sheep. In Britain a similar fly is a terrible scourge to 
the flock-master, producing the fatal disease known as maggots or blow-fly, 
which will run through a flock in a short time, sometimes before it is 
noticed. It is easy to conceive what the result would have been here with 
sheep roaming over the face of the rough country for months often un- 
shepherded. Sheep farming would have been an impossibility. But never 
in these years nor since, have I ever come across or heard of a genuine case 
of maggot running through a flock. Mr. Murison says:—‘‘ Sheep that were 
‘cast’ were soon attacked by the blow-fly, but these were the only cases I 
think" Now we may almost say that the blow-fly has disappeared. Its 
place in nature has been taken up by the smaller common house-fly, Musca 
domestica, 2 more annoying insect to a sleepy man in a hot summer day, but 
not at all so disgusting. In the days I have been speaking of there were no 
house-flies, but gradually they appeared, first in Dunedin, and were much 
talked about, then step by step, season after season, they extended in an 
ever widening cirele till they overspread the whole provinee, entirely 
supplanting, by the inexorable law of the survival of the fittest, the genuine 
old-identity blow-fly. 
Another insect pest which was very prevalent twenty-five years ago, 
and has now all but disappeared everywhere, was the mosquito, Culex acer. 
The mosquito was unknown in Great Britain, and all our ideas with 
reference to it are associated with hot tropical climates, so that it may 
appear to many of you almost startling to say that, in the early days of 
Otago, the mosquito was a great nuisance in the summer time. Still it is 
true, they were met with everywhere, though certain situations and localities 
were more notorious than others for their depredations. These were mostly 
low-lying situations near bush or swamps, but the tormenting pests were 
not by any means confined to such localities. During the summers of "52 
and ’53 I lived at the Waikari, near Dunedin, elevated some 600 feet above 
the level of the sea, and I well remember the dense clouds of mosquitos that 
to congregate towards the ceilings of the rooms in the evening after 
the lamps were lit. They never were bad for biting there, the principal 
annoyance being the singing noise, which constantly kept one in nervous 
dread of an impending onslaught. But in the Taieri Plain the settlers did ' 
