322 - Transactions. — Zoology. 



Dr. Hector in tbe 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. It is a matter of notoriety 

 the rapidity and universality with which the rabbit (Lepus cuniculusj has 

 overspread the province, and the tremendous loss which it is now entailing 

 upon many runholder s. 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 Eeport of a Special Commission, aj)pointed 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 faima. 



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, Ocydromas 

 aiistralis, 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 Bog. By W. D. Mueison. 

 It was in the early part of 1858 that I first learned that wild dogs existed 

 in numbers in the interior. I had prcsdously 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 



