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higher than the rest, you will sometimes find nearly every suitable one occupied. On our 

 run about one pair of Wood-hens occupy about 300 to 400 yards of creek-bed, and you never find 

 more than one pair in a section. Our creeks are all covered at the bottom with thick flax, and the 

 Maoris have specially trained dogs to catch them in these localities. The man rides along the 

 creek, while the dog trots along unconcernedly in the midst of the flax. When he arrives opposite 

 a Wood-hen's home he stops and dashes in, then he as suddenly rushes out and runs ahead of the 

 Wood-hen, which has, of course, started up the creek ; then he turns and meets the bird, of which 

 he makes a short business. A dog that did not understand his work would lose much time— first 

 in searching the ground, and then in chasing the bird along the creek bottom, where it could 

 travel faster than its pursuer. The Wood-hen is a very early breeder — commencing its nesting 

 operations often in July." 



When communicating this to the Wellington Philosophical Society, I wrote : " This note is 

 interesting in itself, and, moreover, shows that this species is still plentiful in the Eangitikei 

 district, at any rate. I have always known the male birds to fight vigorously for their rights ; but in 

 Mr. Wilson's district they appear to have a recognised territorial partition. Birds that are 

 developing so much intelligence surely deserve a better fate than to be collected by a naturalist 

 or consigned to the Maori pot ! But the Wood-hen fights on very unequal terms with its new 

 enemies— stoats and weasels. That the introduced carnivora continue to do untold mischief 

 is beyond question. In the Neiv Zealand Herald I find the following paragraph on this subject : 

 ' Scarcely a day passes but what we hear some news of the depredations by weasels in one part or 

 other of the district. Several deaths among sheep have been reported in the Hautapu district 

 lately, and on Thursday last Mr. Ward lost three fine ewes. The deaths in all cases were 

 attributed to weasels.'* " 



Mr. D. G. Poison, of Mangawhero, Fordell, sends me the following interesting note : " I have 

 read your very instructive article ' On the Ornithology of New Zealand ' with very great interest 



; ' * My own views as to the absolute wickedness of introducing these predatory animals into our fair land are 

 too well known to need repetition. But I should like to quote here what Professor Newton has to say on the 

 subject : < In respect of extermination leading immediately to extinction, the present condition of the New Zealand 

 fauna is one that must grieve to the utmost every ornithologist who cares for more than the stuffed skin of a bird on 

 a shelf. In the fauna of that region the class Aves holds the highest rank, and, though its mightiest members had 

 passed away before the settlement of white men, what was left of its avifauna had features of interest unsurpassed 

 by any others. It was, indeed, long before these features were appreciated, and then by but few ornithologists, yet 

 no sooner was their value recognised than it was found that nearly all of their possessors were rapidly expiring, and 

 the destruction of the original avifauna of this important colony, so thriving and so intellectual, is being attended by 

 circumstances of extraordinary atrocity. . . . Allowing for a considerable amount of exaggeration on the part of 

 the sheep-owners, no one can doubt that the rabbit plague has inflicted a serious loss on the colony. Yet a remedy 

 may be worse than a disease, and the so-called remedy applied in this case has been of a kind that every true 

 naturalist knew to be most foolish— namely, the importation from England and elsewhere and liberation of divers 

 carnivorous mammals— polecats or ferrets, stoats, and weasels. Two wrongs do not make a right, even at the 

 antipodes, and from the most authentic reports it seems, as any zoologist of common-sense would have expected, that 

 the bloodthirsty beasts make no greater impression upon the stock of rabbits in New Zealand than they do in 

 the mother-country, while they find an easy prey in the heedless and harmless members of the aboriginal fauna, 

 many of whom are incapable of flight, so that their days are assuredly numbered. Were these indigenous forms of 

 an ordinary kind their extirpation might be regarded with some degree of indifference ; but, unfortunately, many of 

 them are extraordinary forms— the relics of perhaps the oldest fauna now living. Opportunities for learning the lesson 

 they teach have been but scant, and they are vanishing before our eyes ere that lesson can be learnt. Assuredly the 

 scientific naturalist of another generation, especially if he be of New Zealand birth, will brand with infamy the short- 

 sighted folly, begotten of greed, which will have deprived him of interpreting some of the great secrets of nature. 

 while utterly failing to put an end to the nuisance— admittedly a great one. The provoking part of the thing 

 is that, as shown by Mr. Sclater ('Nature,' xxxix., p. 493), there exists a way, the discovery of Mr. Eodier, at once 

 simple, natural, and efficacious, of reducing the rabbit-pest.' (' Dictionary of Birds,' pp. 224-225 )" 



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