INTBODUCTION. 



XXIX 





From a naturalist's point of view, I regard this act in the light of a crime. The vermin that 

 every farmer in the Old Country was trying to extirpate as an unmitigated evil, our misguided 

 Government bought up by the hundred and imported into New Zealand, in the vain hope that 

 these carnivorous beasts would change their habits and take to a rabbit diet, to the exclusion of 

 everything else ! No doubt, to abate the rabbit nuisance, which was causing widespread loss and 

 even ruin to our sheep-farmers in many parts of the country, was a most desirable object. But it 

 is a question whether, in the introduction of stoats, weasels and ferrets, the Government was not 

 establishing, even from the farmers' point of view, a still greater evil. As shipment after ship- 

 ment of these vermin from over the water arrived in New Zealand, I raised my voice in protest 

 against so insane a policy, and so did others — notably Professor Newton, of Cambridge — but all to 

 no purpose. The imported animals were turned loose north and south, and have now become 

 firmly acclimatised in a country where the conditions of life are so favourable to their existence 

 that no power on earth will ever dislodge them. The Wairarapa was the principal seat of the 

 rabbit plague in the provincial district of Wellington ; so the destroyers, of whom so much was 

 expected, were liberated there. But they did not stay long with the rabbits. Swarming over the 

 dividing range, and crossing in summer the snow-capped ridges of the Buahine, they descended 

 upon the fertile lands of the west coast, where they are now fairly established, and where there 

 are practically no rabbits for them to prey upon. They are making themselves felt, however, in 

 other respects. The rabbits devastated the pastures, but they left the sheep alone. Not so with 

 these " Government immigrants." One farmer at Kereru complained to me that in a single night 

 in one season he lost forty lambs, each exhibiting a small punctured wound, betraying the 

 depredator. The breeding of Turkeys was at one time a profitable industry in these districts, the 

 hen-birds forming their nests in the scrub and along the outer edges of the bush ; but, with these 

 marauders abroad, a Turkey has now very little chance of bringing out a brood. Formerly, the 

 Wood-hen (Ocydromus greyi) was very abundant in the Horowhenua and Manawatu districts, its 

 loud and not unmusical whistle being heard on all hands as the shades of evening deepened into 

 the gloom of night. Now all this is changed. The responsive cries of the Wood-hen are seldom 

 heard, and there is nothing to break the stillness of the night but the call of the Morepork keeping 

 his vigils. The diminution in numbers of our introduced game — Pheasants and Californian Quail 

 — must, I think, be attributed to the same cause. 



In various volumes of the ' Transactions of the New Zealand Institute ' I have published a 

 mass of evidence showing how destructive this new factor has proved. 



It is melancholy to reflect that the New Zealand avifauna, which had already, from a variety 

 of adverse causes, become endangered, should be thus subjected to an overwhelming influence for 

 evil. But for this unfortunate introduction there would have been some hope of many of the 

 species being permanently preserved. Indeed, it had become a subject of remark that such birds 

 as the Wood-hen, the Swamp-hen, and the Banded Bail, were becoming more numerous in all the 

 cultivated districts, the conditions of existence being more favourable.* 



* To show that I am not raising an unnecessary wail over the birds that are vanishing, I will quote a passage from 

 Professor Newton's admirable article on 'Birds' in the Encyclopedia Britannica (p. 742): — "As a whole, the 

 avifauna of New Zealand must be regarded as one of the most interesting and instructive in the world, and the 

 inevitable doom which is awaiting its surviving members cannot but excite a lively regret in the minds of all 

 ornithologists. This regret is quite apart from any question of sentiment ; if it were otherwise, it could not be 

 defended against that sentiment which prompts our colonial fellow-subjects indiscriminately to stock their fields 

 and forests not only with the species of their Mother-country, but with all the fowls of heaven, whencesoever they 

 can be procured. The regret we express arises from the thought that, just as we lament our ignorance of the 

 species which in various lands have been extirpated by our forefathers, so our posterity will want to know much 

 more of the present ornis of New Zealand than we can possibly record; for no one nowadays can pretend to 

 predict the scope of investigation which will be required, and required in vain, by naturalists in that future when 

 New Zealand may be one of the great nations of the earth." 



