nd grubs and scale insects
thrive mischievously. The black and grey rats have driven the native
rat into the recesses of the forest. A score of weeds have come, mixed
with badly-screened grass-seed, or in any of a hundred other ways. The
Scotch thistle seemed likely at one stage to usurp the whole grass
country. Acts of Parliament failed to keep it down. Nature, more
effectual, causes it to die down after running riot for a few years.
The watercress, too, threatened at one time to choke half the streams.
The sweetbriar, taking kindly to both soil and climate, not only grows
tall enough to arch over the head of a man on horseback, but covers
whole hillsides, to the ruin of pasture. Introduced, innocently
enough, by the missionaries, it goes by their name in some districts.
Rust, mildew, and other blights, have been imported along with plant
and seed. The rabbit, multiplying in millions, became a very terror
to the sheep farmers, is even yet the subject of anxious care and
inspection, and only slowly yields to fencing, poison, traps, dogs,
guns, stoats, weasels, ferrets, cats, and a host of instruments of
destruction. In poisoning the rabbit the stock-owners have well-nigh
swept the native birds from wide stretches of country. The weka, or
wood-hen, with rudimentary wings like tufts of brown feathers, whose
odd, inquisitive ways introduce it so constantly to the shepherd
and bushman, at first preyed upon the young rabbits and throve. Now
ferrets and phosphorus are exterminating it in the rabbit-infested
districts. Moreover, just as Vortigern had reason to regret that he
had called in the Saxon to drive out the Picts and Scots, so the
New Zealanders have already found the stoat and weasel but dubious
blessings. They have been a veritable Hengist and Horsa to more than
one poultry farmer and owner of lambs. In addition they do their full
share of the evil work of bird extermination, wherein they have active
allies in the rats and wild cats. On the whole, however, though
acclimatization has given the Colony one or two plagues and some minor
nuisances, it would be ridiculous to pretend that these for a moment
weigh in the scale against its good works. Most of the vegetable
pests, though they may flourish abnormally for a few years in the
virgin soil, soon become less vigorous. With the growth of population
even the rabbit ceases to be a serious evil, except to a few
half-empty tracts. The truth is that outside her forests and