. 822 Transactions.— Zoology. 
Dr. Hector in the last volume of the “ Transactions." And all these 
specimens agree pretty well in their general characters and “ are unlike any 
other of the many breeds of dog with which we are familiar.” At any rate, 
whatever their breed, there is no doubt that they were invariably the first 
and most pressing danger which the squatter had to encounter in going out 
beyond the lines of settlement and taking up new country, into whatever 
part of the province he happened to go. Now the wild dog is certainly 
extinct. 
But though now saved from this scourge, the runholder has to do battle 
with a more serious though less ferocious enemy. Itis a matter of notoriety 
the rapidity and universality with which the rabbit (Lepus cuniculus) has 
overspread the province, and the tremendous loss which it is now entailing 
upon many runholders. Not many years ago there were no rabbits known 
as wild in the province, and you have only to look to various official 
documents, including the Report of a Special Commission, appointed by 
Government to advise on the subject, to be satisfied to what a serious extent 
they have multiplied. These documents contain full and ample information 
on the subject, and render it unnecessary for me here to do anything more 
than merely refer to this as one of the most extensive changes that has 
taken place in our fauna. 
I cannot, however, refrain from expressing an opinion, which I have 
mentioned more than once before at our meetings, that if our settlers were 
a little more careful in protecting the weka or native wood-hen, Ocydromus 
australis, they would find in it one of the most effectual checks to the undue 
increase of the rabbit, mainly, of course, by its entering the breeding 
burrows and destroying the young. 
At the beginning of this paper I proposed to pass on now to the con- 
sideration of some marked changes in the flora of the province which have 
been specially observed by me, and then to have discussed some of the 
general questions involved in the facts put before you with a view to the 
elucidation of the lines along which our observations in future ought to be 
directed, but my narrative has taken more of a popular character than I at 
first intended, and has already extended to such an undue length that I ` 
must leave these for some future time. 
APPENDIX. 
Note on the Wild Dog. By W. D. Murison, 
Ir was in the early part of 1858 that I first learned that wild dogs existed 
in numbers in the interior. I had previously heard of losses of sheep from 
dogs on the few runs then taken up on the coast, but it was never clearly 
known that these were occasioned by the animal which we afterwards knew 
