FEATHERED FRIENDS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 129, 2 June 1928, Page 21

FEATHERED FRIENDS

TREATED AS FOES

MR. GUTHRIE-SMITH'S HOPES

"Birds ;of the Water, Wood, and Waste." By 11. Guthrie-Smith. Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd. The first edition of Mr. Guthrio-' Smith's fascinating bird book is by now, sixteen years since its publication, so well known that the second edition,' which has recently come off the press, needs but little introduction. Tutira, in Hawkes Bay, is well known to every naturalist through the medium of Mr.'Guthrie-Smith's nature studies, his game having spread far beyond the narrow. confines of this Dominion. His intimacy with birds and [ their ways; his ability to get into the friendliest of relations with the birds ho so admires and loves,'coupled with his infectious enthusiasm and ability to convey through the written word the results of his tireless observations, his philosophic reflections and delightful touches of humour, all combine to make "Birds of the Water, Wood, and Waste" a veritable classic. The new edition leaves the text untouched, and there are still the wonderful, photographs of bird life. But there is a new prefatory note, one which in parts makes sad reading. He mentions many of the native birds in turn: of one species we read that their number is less than of yore; that is, when the' first edition was published; of another, that the numbers are decreasing; of another that the species seems to have disappeared from Tutira. Andj-p the sorry tale continues, pointing to the gradual but marked decrease in the numbers of .many of our beautiful native birds. Much truth, is there in Mr. GuthrieSmith's tirade against the senseless destruction that has gone in in Now Zealand. "In the 'seventies," he writes, " a species of insanity would seem to have permeated New Zealand; the country was apparently jio longer to be New Zealand at all. God's work in the Southern Pacific was not good enough: our own native plants and native.birds were unworthy of us. It was given out and widely accepted that the former were of no great beauty, that inevitably the latter must perish. The very Maori race was represented as doomed. Our forests were undervalued, their yearly growth under-estimated, their hardihood denied." But a more optimistic note is struck as to the fate of native birds, but only as regards their survival in State forests and reserves. "The study and.protection of native birds will necessarily become part of a great general scheme of forestry; for the first time in the history of the Dominion their assistance will be considered indispensable. This more satisfactory state of affairs will not have been reached too soon, for on the farms and sheep stations of New Zealand conditions alter daily for the worse." The.damage, he points out, has already been done; all kinds of vermin have been loosed upon the land, and plants have been imported which have .become the curse of the colony. "We hear a great deal about the exodus to towns; is it wondered when noftrouble is taken to make country life agreeable and lovely to children, when every bird large enough to fill the pot is shpt, when natural science is taught out of books instead of in tho fields? In a properly conducted community there should be no place for such a book as 'Birds of the Water, Wood, and Waste.' Every child should have discovered for himself ten times tlio details registered in that' volume." True, no doubt; but things being as they are, while we deplore with My. Guthrie-Smith the disappearance of New Zealand's indigenous avifauna and trust with him that it will be recognised in: the future as a factor which cannot bo neglected, we remain grateful to him for "Birds of tho Water, Wood, and Waste." —H.W.M.

Call it not vain: they do not err ' Who say that when tho poet dies Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And enlebratcs his obsequies. —'Scott. ;