rns, Herefords,
and Devons. His farm horses were of the best Clydesdale and Suffolk
Punch blood. The grasses they fed upon were mixtures of cocks-foot,
timothy, rye-grass, and white clover. When it was found that the red
clover would not flourish for want of penetrating insects, the humble
bee was imported, and with compete success, as many a field now ruddy
with crimson blossom testifies. The common English bee is found
wild in the forest, where it hives in hollow trees, and robs its
competitors--the honey-eating native birds--of much of their food.
The hedges round the fields aforesaid are also English, but with a
difference. The stunted furze which beautifies English commons is at
the other end of the earth a hedge plant, which makes a thick barrier
from five to eight feet high, and, with its sweet-smelling blooms, has
made the New Zealand fields "green pictures set in frames of gold."
The very birds which rise from the clover or wheat, and nest in
the trees or hedgerows of furze or quickset, are for the most part
English--the skylark, the blackbird, finches, green and gold,
thrushes, starlings, and that eternal impudent vagabond the
house-sparrow. Heavy is the toll taken by the sparrow from the
oat-crops of his new home; his thievish nature grows blacker there,
though his plumage often turns partly white. He learns to hawk for
moths and other flying insects. Near Christchurch rooks caw in the
windy skies. Trout give excellent sport in a hundred streams, though
in the lakes they grow too gross to take the fly. Many attempts have
so far failed to acclimatise the salmon. The ova may be hatched out
successfully, but the fish when turned out into the rivers disappears.
The golden carp, however, the perch, and the rainbow trout take
readily to New Zealand. The hare increases in size and weight, and has
three and four leverets at a birth. The pheasant has spread from
end to end of the Colony. The house-fly drives back the loathsome
flesh-fly or blue-bottle, to the salvation of blankets and fresh meat.
The Briton of the south has indeed taken with him all that he could of
the old country.

[Footnote 1: The _tutu_, a danger to inexperienced sheep and cattle,
was not eaten by horses. The berries were poisonous enough to kill an
imported elephant on one occasion. Would that they had done as much
for the rabbit!]

He has also brought a few things which he wishes he had left behind.
The Hessian fly, the wire-worm, the flea, a