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 at the cans. 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 

 decHvity in double quick time, and which the latter described as being some- 

 thing like that of a Eed 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 retuing 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." 



