188 Transactions.—Zoology. 
The Major being deep in confab with the old chief, recounting some of the 
stirring scenes of olden days, and fighting their battles o’er again, I found 
it was of no use going to bed for a time, so lighting my pipe I strolled down 
to the river to have one last look atthecans. The scene was a marvellously 
pretty one. High precipitous cliffs clothed with dark foliage threw a dense 
shadow over part of the river, but the moonlight irradiated with a silvery 
sheen that part of the water in which the fish had been placed. It looked 
like a good omen, and I stood there rearing fancies, and in imagination 
almost saw an angler with his long rod whipping the stream, and by and 
bye landing one of the speckled beauties. Turning to go up again, some 
indefinable impulse for which I cannot account, made me stoop down and 
put my hand in the water, when, to my horror, I found it quite warm! I 
gave a yell which made the Maoris and the Major come tumbling down the 
declivity in double quick time, and which the latter described as being some- 
thing like that of a Red Indian on the war-path. In a few seconds we had 
the cans in the canoes and taken into the centre of the river. Upon 
examining them I found the fish were just beginning to turn over on their 
backs, and were looking as if their last day was come. However, we got 
cold water in the cans from the deep part of the river, and they began to 
revive. We then lowered them by ropes to the river bottom and there left 
them, I going up to keep a lively company with the fleas, which seemed to 
very much appreciate a change of diet from Maori to pakeha! At the first 
glimmer of dawn we were up, got the cans from the river, and found the 
salmon as fresh as paint. Starting at once without waiting for breakfast, 
we had the fish all turned out at their destination by 11 o’clock, and we 
then camped on a gravelly shingle bed and cooked our breakfast, which I 
can assure you we enjoyed, in fact I myself put away nearly a whole ‘billy’ 
full of new potatoes. On returning past our first camping place I found out 
the reason of the water being warm. That part of the river where the 
canoes landed was a kind of back-water. At night it looked like a rippling 
stream, but in the day time you could see that there was scarcely any 
motion in the water. Being shut in by cliffs and a hot sun pouring on it 
all day, it naturally became warm, and if I had not put my hand in the 
water just before retiring for the night, we should have had to come back to 
Wanganui with the sad report that all the salmon were dead, which would, 
no doubt, have been attributed to our own carelessness and mismanagement. 
The Wanganui river flows for miles over gravelly reaches interspersed with 
rapids and deep dark pools, looking a very paradise for salmon and trout. 
A number of the latter, as well as some perch, have been put in, and we hope 
in a year or two more to have some good fishing.” 
