New Zealanders--the farmers hate them. The European
settlers had the audacity to introduce also the most beautiful and
beloved of all birds, our own perfect "Robin Redbreast," and they add
want of manners to their violent and uncalled-for hospitality by
speaking ill of this sweetest and brightest of living things. After
this, I am rather glad to report that the esteemed table-delicacies,
pheasants and partridges, don't get on well in New Zealand; nor do
turtle-doves. The thrush is spreading and meets with the approval of
the hypercritical New Zealander. The hedge-sparrow, the chaffinch and
the goldfinch have flourished abundantly, but the linnet has failed. A
very interesting and important problem for New Zealand naturalists to
solve is that as to why one bird succeeds in their remote land and
another does not. The British trout have grown to an enormous size and
are destroying all other fresh-water life. Imported red-deer flourish,
and are shot with great satisfaction by the colonists. The American
elk has been introduced in the South Island, and the mountain
goats--the ibex and the thar--are to be acclimatized in the mountains,
so that unnatural sport may flourish in this ancient land of quiet and
of wondrous birds, turned topsy-turvy by enlightened man.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE EFFACEMENT OF NATURE BY MAN

Very few people have any idea of the extent to which man since his
upgrowth in the late Tertiary period of the geologists--perhaps a
million years ago--has actively modified the face of Nature, the vast
herds of animals he has destroyed, the forests he has burnt up, the
deserts he has produced, and the rivers he has polluted. It is, no
doubt, true that changes proceeded, and are proceeding, in the form of
the earth's face and in its climate without man having anything to say
in the matter. Changes in climate and in the connections of islands
and continents across great seas and oceans have gone on, and are
going on, and in consequence endless kinds of animals and plants have
been, some extinguished, some forced to migrate to new areas, many
slowly modified in shape, size, and character, and abundantly
produced. But over and above these slow irresistible changes there has
been a vast destruction and defacement of the living world by the
uncalculating reckless procedure of both savage and civilised man
which is little short of appalling, and is all the more ghastly in
that the results have been very rapidly brou