amazingly, and Mr. Brittan made an early, though unsuccessful attempt to introduce the partridge.
Many of the English song birds were imparted in the early days of the settlement. Mr. George Rhodes turned out the first pair of blackbirds at Purau, and the arrival of a family of little ones was duly recorded in the papers. A later importation, if is rumoured, was less fortunate in its results—a consignment of blackbirds arrived, but the members of the Society, alas, were no ornithologists, and the lighter plumage of the hens caused them to be mistaken for thrushes; so the cock birds were turned out in one locality, and the supposed thrushes in another, so that they should not interfere with each others’ nesting arrangements.
Soon after its incorporation, the Society decided (December 29, 1864) to advertise its needs in the Emigration Office in London. The prices offered for delivery in Canterbury were “£10 10s. per pair for Black Game, or Grouse; £5 for Partridges; £2 for Blackbirds, Thrushes, and Larks; down to 15/- per pair for Sparrows; also £10 per pair for Hares.” The inclusion of the sparrow in the list of “desirable emigrants” needs explanation. The country was infested then by vast swarms of caterpillars; they appeared in their myriads about harvest time, and marched upon the ripening crops of wheat. In a few hours they would eat through every stalk, just below the ear, thus stripping the crop and leaving the ground littered with the half-ripened grain. Where the nature of the soil permitted, some farmers dug water trenches round their crops to protect them, but in most eases this was impracticable. It was the abundance of insect life—caterpillars, grasshoppers, grubs and beetles which enabled the first pheasants to thrive so marvellously.
When the sparrows had “adjusted the balance of nature” between the caterpillar and the grain growers, they, in their turn, took tall from the wheat fields, and
