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NEW ZEALAND 
to get more than a very general knowledge of the dangers to be 
avoided, and consequently the launches bump frequently and heavily. 
I thought at the time that it was a great mistake to use steel-built 
craft on such a river. The most suitable boats would be double- 
straked wooden vessels, built as whaling ships are. The very next 
launch to ours struck a snag and sank just as she was being beached. 
Luckily it was a place where there was standing room, and what is 
more, the means of making a fire, so that beyond wet feet and skirts 
and soaked baggage, the sufferings of the passengers and crew were 
not serious. Two men made a raft, and went in the darkness seven 
miles down the river for help, for there was no telegraph, not even 
a road through the bush. After waiting some hours, another launch 
was sent up in the darkness to pick them up, and after doing so 
was itself twice within an ace of being wrecked, and that in a much 
more dangerous place, where the water was deep. The rescuing 
party had not the foresight to carry any food, so the forlorn 
passengers had but a cup of tea and two or three biscuits apiece 
between lunch one day and breakfast the following morning. 
Among them was a lady who a few weeks before had suffered a 
much more serious shipwreck in The Sounds, and, with her fellow- 
passengers, had been taken off a rock by H.M.S. “ Pegasus.” Such is 
holiday making in New Zealand S 
Pipiriki, Wanganui River. 
February 20th—22nd, 1910. 
Pipiriki overlooks two of the more open reaches of the river 
where the rapids are perhaps at their worst. 
Once again the hotel proved to be the best collecting ground. 
It is a large wooden building only just opened, replacing a previous 
structure that had been burned down a few months before. 
Although *Deilemera annulata was unusually abundant in the 
locality, I was surprised when several of them came to light; it was 
more in accordance with the fitness of things to welcome Persectania 
ewingi , *P. atristriga, Walk., *Morrisonia insignis , and even the 
cosmopolitan Cirphis unipuncta , Haw. 
With the Noctuae came several Geometers: Epyaxa subidaria, 
*Selidosemapanagrata, Walk.; *Pseudo-coremia suavis , Butl.; Asthma 
pulchraria , and Emmiltis ruhraria , although this last was nothing- 
like as common as at Taumaranui; by far the most conspicuous 
of the family was * Hemerophila dejectaria , of which I got no less 
than eight. 
