310 Transactions. — Zoology. 



formed by tlieii- dragging the carcass literally black with millions of blow- 

 flies, and not one on any other part of the ground or herbage." Mr. 

 Mtirison 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 then- eggs in the wool, or any 

 part of the hving 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 vv^ould 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. Murisou 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 

 jplace in nature has been taken up by the smaller common house-fly, Musca 

 doniestica, a 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 circle till they overspread the whole province, 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 everj^where, 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 AVaikari, near Dunedin, elevated some 600 feet above 

 the level of the sea, and I well remember the dense clouds of mosquitos that 

 used 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 



