312. Transactions.—Z oology. 
most vulnerable points, I took a piece of stiff drawing-paper and bent it over 
my head in the form of the old scoop-bonnets of our grandmothers. I then 
took a large piece of mosquito netting, and put it all over my head and face, 
and tied it firmly round my neck below the level of where the opossum rug 
was tucked in. In this way the netting did not inconvenience me in 
breathing, and was kept sufficiently far off my face to prevent my enemies 
stinging through it. For two summers I constantly lay down to sleep with 
this paraphernalia on my head, and I can assure you if you had looked in 
on me you would have thought mea very comical sight, but what matter 
about that, it secured me repose. Not so, however, my poor men, who had 
no mosquito netting. Many a night when I have happened to awake have 
I heard them tumbling about in the adjoining tent swearing at those 
mosquitos. And in the morning, to see them turn out haggard and weary, 
with perhaps an eye almost closed up or cheek swollen to undue propor- 
tions with thé onslaught made on them during the night, I confess it 
required a harder nature than mine to refrain from pitying them. Though 
I must say they always made light of it, but then, in the early days, there 
was a romance in everything which made men glory in difficulties and 
discomforts, and even make fun of hunger and risk of life. I remember one 
season on the New River I had a new chum, fresh landed from the ship, asa 
chainman. That man was such a martyr to mosquitos that he always slept 
during the whole summer with all his clothes on him even to his very boots. 
He suffered so much that I would have discharged him had it not been that 
he was a first-class hand. Extraordinary though this may appear to you, 
it can be verified, for the man is alive to this day, and can be found as a 
successful settler not far from Invercargill. 
It may seem almost ridiculous for me to tell you that fleas, Pulex 
irritans, were much more numerous in the early days of the settlement than 
they are now, for you will be sure at once to jump to the conclusion that 
that was owing to the necessarily semi-savage habits of the first settlers and 
to their contact with the Maoris. No doubt, as better houses were built 
and more civilized habits became possible, these insect pests had not the 
same chance as before, but this does not account for all the change. The 
Maoris, too, with their pigs and their dogs can, in other parts of New 
Zealand, account for a great deal of what was in those days, the special 
characteristic of New Zealand, but inasmuch as there never were many 
-~ Maoris here, and they were hardly or ever employed or kept about the 
settlers’ premises, this cause had practically no existence here. And yet, 
go where you liked, in town or country, the fleas were masters of the situa- 
ge tion, and were more talked about than even the Crimean war. The whole 
face of the eountry was covered everywhete with a dense impenetrable 
