Gillies. — Notes on some Changes in the Fauna of Otago. 307 



care conld be taken so to conduct observations as to ensure results which 

 could be tabulated with all the accuracy of numerical precisioii. 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 indicate 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 shh't), 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 



