1922.] Bathgate.—Changes in Fauna and Flora of Otago. 275 
caterpillars is nature’s provision to protect them from enemies, but I am 
inclined to think that the assertion that no bird will eat woolly caterpillars 
is too wide in its terms, and that, whilst a bird might reject a large woolly 
caterpillar, it might without injury to its digestive organs readily eat tiny 
specimens just hatched. Whether or no, the fact remains, and is, I think, 
pretty well established, that the disappearance of the caterpillars coincided 
with the increase of the starling. The moth with black wings spotted with 
white ( Nyctemera annulata was much more commonly to be seen in the 
neighbourhood of Dunedin than is the case at the present day, which is 
probably due to the extermination by cultivation of the food plant of the 
larvae. While this may be the case in this locality, it is very different in 
the situation where the introduced weed ragwort ( Senecio Jacobaea) abounds, 
if I may judge from what I saw in the neighbourhood of Lumsden a 
few years ago, where these moths were very abundant and the larvae were 
also numerous, feeding on the ragwort, which evidently afforded a suitable 
food- upply, and this resulted in these moths being present in far greater 
numbers than I had ever seen elsewhere. 
Native blow-flies ( Calliphora quadrimaeulata ) were very much more 
abundant in the country districts than they are now. Mr. Mieville, who 
settled in the Mataura district in 1854, in his contribution to Pioneer 
Recollections, collected by Mr. H. Beattie (second series), says, “ The trouble 
of pioneers is the bluebottle-fly, which is to be met with only in new country, 
where its ravages are beyond belief.” He gives many details showing 
their abundance and persistence in laying their eggs, even in most unlikely 
places, and concludes by adding, “ Nothing is safe, and I know of no 
remedy except civilization, which always brings the common house-fly, 
before which the bluebottle, for some unknown reason, retires/’ No doubt 
they were very abundant in “ new country,” but in my experience they 
continued to be so after civilization had. invaded their territories for a 
decade or more, though the house-fly had not penetrated there. Whether 
there was more than one species I cannot tell, but, if there were, they all 
kept near the ground, for every digger’s tent or hut had a pole, about 10 ft. 
or 12 ft. in height, to the top of which the owner hoisted, not his country’s 
flag, but his supply of mutton, to protect it from the blow-flies, which, 
if opportunity offered, might deposit their eggs on his blankets, but his 
mutton escaped. The common house-fly ( Musca domesticci), which had 
been introduced by the cattle-ships from Australia, was not nearly so 
plentiful in Dunedin as it is now, and up country was in many places 
unknown. 
Turning to the birds, of which many have disappeared from Otago, and 
especially from the immediate neighbourhood of Dunedin, one of the most 
striking is the sudden extinction of the native quail ( Coturnix novae-zea- 
landiae), which were very abundant all over the open country. Mr. Mieville, 
in his leminiscences already quoted, says, “ Quail (or koreko) shooting was 
delightful sport. They were round my station in thousands.” They had 
ceased to be in evidence before I visited the interior, but so recently that 
the earlier settlers spoke of them as having been abundant a year or two 
before. Sir Walter Buller deals with the subject in his History of the Birds 
of Neiv Zealand, and says, “ Partly owing to the introduction of dogs, 
cats, and rats, and partly to the prevalence of the so-called bush-fires, or 
burning of the runs (a necessary incident of sheep-farming in a new country), 
the quail rapidly disappeared.” No doubt the causes mentioned by Sir 
Walter largely contributed to the result, but they do not, to my mind, 
