In a land which depends to a very large extent on agricultural and pastoral pursuits and industries some knowledge of the animal and vegetable life of the country should be taught in every school, and the love of Nature in all her varied aspects should be inculcated in every child. The best way of acquiring such knowledge is by observation, and every child is more or less a naturalist from the start. It has been said that man is a classificatory animal, and it is wonderful how most children begin to collect such objects as interest them, and how, unconsciously, they begin to classify them.

But, hand-in-hand with observational work, a certain amount of instruction is very helpful, and if the one can work in harmoniously with the other progress in the knowledge of Nature is greatly facilitated. Books conveying instruction in botany are common enough, but those dealing with the rudiments of zoological work in a form sufficiently attractive to the uninformed reader are by no means numerous. I do not know of any work dealing with the animals which are frequently met with in New Zealand, and in the hope of partly supplying this want I propose to write a few sketches of the wild life of the country, in which I shall attempt to give some account of those which are most common. The late Professor Hutton and Mr. James Drummond, of Christchurch, published some years ago a valuable work entitled “Animals of New Zealand,” which should be in every school library. This, besides being rather expensive for most private readers, is a more or less technical work, and deals only with the higher vertebrate fauna indigenous to these Islands. Excellent little articles appear from time to time in the School Journal, but these are not readily procurable.

In all centres of settlement the animal life is almost as much due to foreign immigration as the people are; but observers cannot tell this fact without some assistance, and one of the difficulties with which all embryo naturalists are met is to know which plants and animals are native and which are introduced. Let me illustrate this.

Living as I do in a suburb of Dunedin, just outside the Town Belt, I observe in my walks that in this neighbourhood certain species of birds are very common. They are house-sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, and hedge-sparrows. These are all forms which have been introduced from Great Britain. Almost as abundant, but more erratic in their occurrence, are wax-eyes (or twinkies) and goldfinches—the former a somewhat recent immigrant, apparently from Australia, and the latter introduced from Britain. Less abundant in varying degree are grey warblers, tomtits, fan-tailed flycatchers, chaffinches, greenfinches, an occasional yellowhammer, and a little brown owl. The first three are natives, the rest are introduced. The native bell-bird (or korimako) visits the gardens from time to time, especially when the trees are in flower; while occasionally in the outlying districts one hears or sees a tui or a morepork: these are all natives. In the more open country introduced skylarks are common, as are the native ground-larks, or pipits. On the seashore are numerous species of birds, but these are all indigenous species. On still nights one often hears the black swans flying overhead in their migrations from one sheet of water to another: these were introduced from Western Australia.

About the house are occasionally a few mice, and in town brown rats are common. These are not kept in check by the dogs and cats which are common in many houses. During the nights hedgehogs roam about the gardens, and are far more common than unobservant people have any notion of. All these and the other mammals met with, such as horses and cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and rabbits, were originally introduced, mostly from Britain.

When I go to work in the garden I turn up numerous earthworms, nearly all belonging to introduced species—unless I start to trench in new ground, when I come on native species. The wood-lice are introduced; so are the earwigs, which are so common in the north end of Dunedin; so are all the slugs and snails. The bees and humble-bees are introduced, as are the large drone-flies which visit so many of our flowers in autumn and early winter. Nearly all the plants in our fields, orchards, and gardens, cultivated ones and weeds alike, are of foreign origin; so are the aphides and scale insects which infest them. The flies which infest our houses and carry dirt and disease in all directions are foreigners; so are the borers which destroy our houses and furniture; and so also are bugs, fleas, and lice, which are harboured in dirty surroundings.

The question might well be asked, Where do the native species come in? The answer would have to be that wherever man goes certain species of animals and plants follow him, and become established if the conditions are suitable; while another section he either takes with him for their utility or introduces afterwards for various reasons; and the native species gradually get pushed out.

Let us consider these two kinds of introductions. The only mammals in New Zealand which were introduced by man unconsciously are rats and mice. These accompany man wherever he goes and settles, and do so very much against his will. All the other forms—horses, opossums, wallabies, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, deer, dogs, cats, hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, and guinea-pigs—were introduced of set purposes. All the introduced birds were also brought to this country on purpose. So were the introduced fishes—salmon, trout, carp, perch, tench, turbot, &c. So were the frogs. As we get lower down the scale of the animal kingdom we find the self-introduced forms increasing in proportion and number, and those brought in for definite reasons becoming fewer.

No fewer than twenty-eight species of slugs and snails have been introduced into the country. Of these, one—a water-snail (Lymnaea stagnalis)—was brought here for the purpose of feeding imported trout; all the rest were imported among some kind of agricultural or horticultural produce. The case of the insects is especially interesting. About 270 species have been introduced. Those kinds which were first brought for some definite purpose were silkworms, then honey-bees, and later humble-bees. An unsuccessful attempt was also made to introduce the cochineal insect. The silkworms, which are, of course, not wild animals in any sense of the term, never became established, but they can still be obtained from a few dealers. The humble-bees were brought here for the special purpose of fertilizing red clover; and thus obtaining seed from the plants, instead of having constantly to import seed from abroad. In more recent years eleven species of insects—mostly ichneumons and ladybirds—have been introduced by the Department of Agriculture to cope with other insects which have become pests, the larvae of the former being parasites in the bodies of their prey, the latter feeding directly upon aphides. All the other introduced insects—that is, over 250 species—have been brought here unwittingly.

Nineteen species of earthworms have found their way into the country, most probably among the earth and the roots of introduced plants.

It will thus be seen that wherever people are settled in New Zealand the greatest number of animals to be met with are immigrants like themselves. A popular account, therefore, of the wild life of the country must deal with these introductions, as well as with those native forms which are still to be met with commonly. This, then, must be my apology for writing some sort of consecutive account of the common animals which are now to be found near the haunts of men, as well as of those which take some finding. Descriptions of introduced animals are to be obtained only by reading books of natural history dealing with other countries, or in isolated articles, such as the useful leaflets issued from time to time by the Department of Agriculture.

Nearly all children, and a majority of grown-up people as well, are fond of natural history, and many who have lost the early taste find it revive when they are brought in contact with it later. I should feel rewarded if this little book should stimulate the love of nature in any of its readers, and especially if it would cause a more general desire for nature-study to spring up in our schools.

The first Europeans who landed in New Zealand and who came to know something of the animals which were to be met with were those who came with Captain Cook in his visit here in 1769. They found that the birds and beasts were very different from those they had known in the Homeland from which they had come. They also noticed that there were very few animals or plants which were desirable for food, or which were likely to furnish food to later arrivals; and Cook was sufficiently far-seeing to recognize that before long many of his countrymen would come to these Islands either to visit them or to stay. These early European voyagers found that the Maoris, whom they met for the first time, and who were far more numerous than they are now, had no domestic animals except dogs, which they kept for food. They also found that a rat was very common in many parts; but they met with no other four-footed animals, except, probably, lizards.

So Cook and those who followed him thought it would be a good thing for the country, and for the Europeans who might come later to live in it, if the best and most useful animals and plants which occurred in Britain were brought to New Zealand. They were, then, the pioneers in starting the introduction of European forms by giving the Natives pigs, goats, fowls, and seeds of several plants. Other animals and plants were brought here from time to time, and as white people increased in number, and gradually occupied much of the land and brought it into cultivation, these introduced forms in certain localities soon displaced many of the native forms. All the thickly peopled and settled parts of New Zealand are much more like parts of Europe as far as animals and plants are concerned than they are like the New Zealand which Cook knew. The reason is that wherever white men go to settle they take with them certain animals and plants, which they keep and cultivate. Besides, as already said, a great many things come into the new country with the immigrants—things which are not wanted, perhaps, but which follow white men wherever they go—and these things frequently become very common. We call the plants “weeds” because they grow where they are not wanted. But we have no name for the uninvited animals—mostly small—which thus come into the country, until perhaps they become very common, and then we just call them “pests”—nasty hurtful things to be destroyed and got rid of.

Now, if we are going to study the natural history of the country—both its native (or indigenous) and introduced animals and plants—we must put away from our minds the idea of “weeds” and “pests,” and look at and think of them as wonderful works of creation, full of beauty and interest. All nature is full of beauty, and if one looks for this it will be found everywhere. It will also be found that the study of the book of nature is unending. It does not stop, like the story of a book, but the more one learns and the more one comes to know the more one will find fresh chapters opening. If you are a naturalist, a true lover of Nature, and study her for half a century, you will find at the end of that time that you are only beginning to learn a little about the wonderful things which occur and exist in this wonderful world in which we live.

In describing the more common animals of New Zealand I am going to follow the regular order in which a naturalist would probably catalogue them.

At this point a word is necessary as to the names to be used. Some people profess to object very strongly to the use of technical names, and say, “Give us English names that we can understand.” The objection is absurd, and arises from ignorance and want of thought. How could a naturalist give English names to the thousands of native and introduced moths, beetles, and flies already known? To take a more special case among the beetles alone, how could he distinguish among the twenty-five species of native and the half-dozen or more introduced ladybirds? The thing cannot be done. On the other hand, technical names are given on a definite and simple plan, and are really not difficult to master. We use them every day in speaking of garden-plants—Anemone, Crocus, Gladiolus, Chrysanthemum, Dahlia, Fuchsia, Veronica, and so on.

In regard to the animals we are to deal with in this book we hardly need to use technical names, and will do so as sparingly as possible.

The first and highest group in the animal kingdom are the Mammalia. These are vertebrate (or back-boned) animals which are fur-clad, and the females have glands which secrete milk for the nourishment of the young. These glands open to the surface of the body by teats, or mammae, hence the name. Mammals are all warm-blooded animals. There are many other distinctive features by which animals of this group are characterized, both anatomical and physiological, but here we intend to give only the most distinctive points.

Mammals are divided into several orders, and of these six are now represented in the New Zealand fauna. As I do not wish to burden these pages with technicalities, I shall give only the briefest accounts of these orders, and mention the animals found here which belong to them.

1. The animals of the order Marsupialia are popularly known as pouched animals. Their most distinctive character is that the mammae lie within a pouch in which the young are placed while in an imperfect condition. Two kinds of animals belonging to this order are wild in New Zealand—namely, wallabies and so-called opossums.

2. The order Ungulata includes a large assemblage of herbivorous animals of somewhat diverse character. They possess theoretically five toes in each foot, but actually these are reduced to two, or, in the case of the horse, to one toe. This reduction is accompanied by a reduced condition of the ulna, which is fused with the radius, and the fibula is fused with the tibia. The order includes horses, pigs, deer, oxen, sheep, and goats, all of which are, or have been, wild in this country.

3. The third order, Cetacea, forms an extraordinary group of warm-blooded animals, which breathe air and suckle their young, but live in the sea. It includes all the forms known as whales, and all are indigenous to New Zealand.

4. The Carnivora are, as their name implies, flesh-eaters. Their teeth have sharp cutting-edges, and the canines are well developed to enable them to tear the flesh off their prey. The order includes cats, dogs, stoats, ferrets, and weasels, all of which have been introduced; and seals, which are indigenous.

5. The animals of the order Rodentia are only occasionally carnivorous. All possess long incisors furnished with strong chisel-like edges, and with these they are able to gnaw their food, from which circumstance the name is derived. The canine teeth are quite absent. In New Zealand are to be found rats, mice, rabbits, and hares.

6. The last order represented here is the Insectivora, a group, mostly of small animals, which is very difficult to define. The only animal belonging to the order in New Zealand is the hedgehog.