BIRD LIFE ON A NEW ZEALAND RUN. 25 
this of the grand old gentleman in his sylvan retreat, with all 
kinds of garden songsters answering his call, confiding with that 
“ trust that only those who love can know,” and feeding from 
a loving, merciful hand. It was a picture of religion, poetry 
and music, all combined ; seldom seen now-a-days, but read of 
in the delightful tales of a far-off Arcadia. 
James Startin. 
BIRD LIFE ON A NEW ZEALAND RUN. 
natural history in New Zealand is at present in a 
transition stage. The balance of the old order of things 
has been overthrown by the importation of new 
animals, the wide distribution of fire-arms, a foreign 
vegetation, and consequent on that, to some extent even by 
a new climate. 
Speaking broadly, forty years ago the North Island was 
densely clothed in fern. In the colder and damper glens that 
faced the south, bush grew, and in some parts great forests 
extended for miles. The undrained swamps were covered with 
flags and fla.x {Phormium tenax), and the only considerable 
tract of land in grass was the sterile country about the vol- 
canic region of Taupo and Ohenemutu. This alone remains as 
it was. Hundreds of thousands of acres of fern land have been 
burnt, stocked, and sown down with rye grass and cocksfoot ; 
forests have been felled and swamps drained and ploughed. 
The descendants of imported dogs, weasels, ferrets, and cats 
roam the remaining wooded ranges, and prey upon our strange 
and curious ground birds — the kiwi, the kakapo, the blue moun- 
tain duck and the weka. So rapid is the disappearance of the 
two former that steps are being taken to preserve them, and on 
several small islands they have been successfully established. 
The natives, too, are all armed wdth breech-loaders, and 
they pay little or no attention to the close season, so that 
through them, also, many of the native birds are in danger. 
English bees, too — there are thousands of wild swarms in the 
bush — gathering the honey lessen the ancient food supply of the 
nectar-loving birds. They also usurp, or at any rate occupy, 
the holes in trees where kaka parrots or parroquets have built or 
would have built, and I have twice taken out egg shells in 
obtaining the honey from a wild bush hive. While some species 
of native birds increase in spite of these changes, to many more 
they are fatal, and only those survive who can adapt themselves 
to their novel environments. 
On the run where there is still cover, and weasels have not 
yet appeared, the weka holds his own, having taken kindly to 
his novel diet of English mice and rats, young larks, and 
