SEVEN PLAGUES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 51, 2 March 1937, Page 7

SEVEN PLAGUES

PAKEHA'S PARASITES

IMPORTED PESTS

"A WHITE MAN'S COUNTRY"

New Zealand's . veteran naturalist, Mr. H. Guthrie-Smith, has catalogued the plagues of New Zealand. Like Egypt, they number seven. And, like the Egyptians, but ;more so than , the Egyptians, we have brought them all on ourselves. Egypt (writes "Forest and Bird," published by the Forest and Bird Protection Society) had a plague of locusts, but the Egyptians did not import the locusts; the locusts came to Egypt. But when New Zealanders met with plagues of rats, which have happened in various districts in various years, New Zealanders found that the rats, were of species which came with the,white man.

Worse still. Though it may be said that the rats were ship-escapes, that cannot be said of one of the latest and greatest plagues, deer. Deer were a deliberate importation. New Zealanders looked for plagues of 'deer, stoats, and ground vermin. They have found what they looked for.

In his new book, "Sorrows and Joys of a New- Zealand Naturalist," Mr. Guthrie-Smith enumerates seven causes of New ; Zealand's "biological catastrophe."

l.: The arrival of Cook, £>c Surville, and.dv Fresne and Crozet, after which "foreign weeds had established themselves, the,black rat was over-running the ;woods, pigs had been liberated on both islands, the pas already-swarmed with fleas." The above-mentioned navigators "share the onus" of these four introductions, and the pig was introduced deliberately.

2/"The exploitation of the coastline by the sealing . and whaling-fraterni-ties," who renewed exotic introductions and extended their range. "It is perhaps not to be wondered at that pigs, goats, and rabbits—stock of strongest constitution and .of most rapid multiplication—should have been landed as emergency rations for storm-stayed or shipwrecked sailor folk." It was probably in this second period that the cat arrived. "None of man's parasites more readily quits him for the wilds than the cat. Sailors' shipboard pets originally, but- sometimes landed with shore parties, they, quickly took to the woods. The dog, we learn from Colenso, was brought to New Zealand by .whalers." 3. The third plague period began with tillage, the missionaries leading the way, assisted by whalers and others •who developed land settlement tendencies.' Without denying the utilitarian value of the missionaries" first ploughing (1820) and of the introduction of farm stock, Mr. Guthrie-Smith thus drops the curtain on this third period:' "The curtain falls on a land stocked with domestic animals, fowls, rabbits, \ cats, dogs, swine, goats, rats multiplied to incredible numbers, wheat, barley, oats, vegetables, pot herbs in every coastal kairtga, here and there groves of cherry and peach, here and there fields of grass and grain, here and there gardens stocked with the dear, well-remembered wild flowers and fruits of the distant Homeland—sweet briar, periwinkle, and blackberry." 4; "The advent of the New Zealand Land Company"—with consequent intensification '• of those things noted above.

5. The discovery of gold, which sent gold prospectors (cat-owners, goatowners, etc.), into remote, non-pastoral districts, where farmers1 would -not; have gone. Thus gold-seeking introduced ■"'destructive civilisation ■ into those areas not touched by the farmer. .6. "The tragedies of acclimatisation . . The importation of at 'least, rabbits, deer, and weasels might have averted." • . , '■ 7. The ■starting:' of a new wave of settlement:directed at the bush areas, which were raided \vith axe and name. This "last act of destruction," destruction of great areas of heavy forest formerly spared, began in the middle eighties. The Government imposed on sellers clearing conditions that compelled them to lay waste the forest. And to the extent that deforestation promoted1 flooding and erosion, the settlers also had to lay waste the countryside. Today on the remnants of forest land forest birds must find a living, and the same remark applies to ■waterfowl and the remaining swamps.

By all'the arts of settlement, beginning with the enormous fires that cleared the eariy vegetable covering of unf orested Canterbury, and ending with the enormous bush fires of land-clear-ing settlement in the forested north, New Zealand rajpidly became "little better than a home for white men."

Today,, in this country, the Governments and the acclimatisation societies both have their monuments. The monument of the Governments (particularly that Government which boasted of "settlement and still, more settlement") is the country township. Mr. GuthrieSmith pictures it: "The. early huts sown in the dripping" woods shot into grey unpainted;townships, and then into galvanised.irbn towns, each surrounded with its;ring of desolation. 'Immed^" ately without,1 the largest trees stood gaunt, grey, and grim, naked in death; or lay a scatter of charred logs litter-, ing the desecrated, earth." ■ ■ ■, And what is the monument of the acclimatisation societies? The deer, of course. But not only the deer. "The evils of acclimatisation are ineradicable; any results—except perhaps the introduction of: trout—not wholly bad were precarious and ephemeral." Tha rabbits having become a plague, the remedy tried was a worse plague— the weasel'tribe. Later, importations of dfter were made long after the earlier ones had demonstrated their iniquity.: Mr. Guthrie-Smith's book is worth reading for a hundred other reasons, since it advances knowledge in countless ways, but no one should .fail to read this tragic history of a forest and an avifauna that were sheltered for centuries;. but which white settlement pitilessly exposed to the attacks of every known enemy.

Feu-de-joie is strictly a fire lighted in the streets or. public squares on occasions of generel rejoicing—a bonfire. The- English use of the term is to denote a "running fire" of musketry, when troops in line fire rapidly in succession.