NATURE AND MAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 10 June 1939, Page 15

NATURE AND MAN

PLANTING FOR BEAUTY AND BIRDS j EVERYBODY l AN BO SOMETHING (.Edited by Leo. Fanning) I Frequently, when perusing the Forest and Bird Protection Society’s files of | press clippings, I see how the planting ! of suitable trees and shrubs has : brought native birds close to the homes j of people in many parts of the North I and South Islands. Thus increasing I numbers of New Zealanders are enj joying the chants of tuis and bell-birds,

especially tuis, whose food range has! i been much expended by thoughtful | i planters. Their planting is a good ser- ; vice for their own homes, for their , town and for their country. What an 'easy delightful way to be a good New; : Zealander! Fantails and grey-warblers, although i they are not interested in nectar or berries, aie also grateful for plantings i which give them shelter and cosy I places for nesting. The other day in !my garden—which is only ten minutes walk from the centre of Wellington city—l saw five fantails in nimble aerial chase of insects. Grey-warblers also j visit me, and sing their sad-sweet j songs. The occasional presence of those birds is due to the growth of shrubs and trees in my locality. THE WHITE-EYE IS A WARRIOR ! If caterpillars have traditions of i demons the most terrible one in the list must be the white-eye. One morning I I saw a white-eye knocking the life j out of a fat green caterpillar which j was about an’ inch and a half long. . When the bird felt that the body had been battered enough, it was swallowed, head-first. It looked a big meal for a little chap, but was he satisfied? He paused for a moment to wipe his beak, and away he went fossicking for more of the leaf-binders. He was indeed a keen inspector. PHILOSOPHY OF THE WILD Tony Lascelles tells ir “Nature Magazine” how he learned much from Ahmeek, a Red Indian of the old school. "It was Ah-meek who taught me much of what I know about the wilderness,” he wrote. “It was he who gave me my initiation into the mysteries of the Brotherhood of the Wild. It was his philosophy that caused me to wonder at the indifference of civilisation toward the silent places and wild things and the race to which he. belonged.

“Ah-meek believed, as did others of his kind uncontaminated by the influence of the white man, that he was an integral part of the wilderness in which he lived, a cog in the everturning wheel of life. He killed, like the other flesh-eaters who shared his domain, without malice, or pride, with apologies for a deed born of compulsion. To the moose he would say, in an undertone, before his rifle spoke: ‘Brother moose, I am sorry to take your life but I need your flesh for food and your hide for clothing. It is your turn to die; some day it will be mine.’ To the frozen body of a varying hare pinned beneath a dead-fall, he had a woi'd of sympathy, believing it was just I and right to offer an explanation re- | garding its earthly demise. Even to the woverline, ‘Robber of the Woods,’ something must be said in extenuation when it died at his hands.

“The tenets of his abiding faith decreed that the slaughter of any form j of wild lij’e must be justified and purposeful in accordance with natural laws. Moose and mouse and the feathered folk of the forest and marsh were spiritually as one in the eyes of Manitou (the supreme good Spirit). He believed, too, that every living thing had a duty to perform for the benefit of the whole, and that human beings,

irrespective of race and creed, were no exception to an inexorable law of Nature interwoven in the fabric of all j affairs. He knew the cycles of populI ation abundance and depression of the creatures upon whose lives he and his tribe once entirely depended for a live- | lihood and a measure of happiness to 1 salve the trials and tribulations of a I primitive existence, and killed accordingly, until compelled by greed of the white man to scramble for the crumbs. I “Ah-meek. indeed, was altruistic, a i virtue whose worth we have not yet learned to appreciate in our prosecuj tion of wilderness affairs; a virtue we | will never acquire until human ; arrogance and a conceited desire to occupy a self-appointed place in the ; sun gives way to a knowledge that, in | the scheme of things, we are but an | inconsequential part of a more glorious j remainder.”' I The old-time Maoris of New Zealand ! had the same philosophy as Ah-meek. I FORESTS AS PERPETUAL CAPITAL 1 The usual kind of timber-milling in New Zealand is destructive. Native ! Forests have been regarded as things ,to give one yield of timber. Some- | times the place cleared has been suitJ able for farming; sometimes the slaughter of the woods has opened the j way for erosion. The hackers got their 1 profit, and left the penalty for posterI ity. In pleasant contrast with that un- ! patriotic selfishness is the practice of a company in U.S.A. “For many years, in arranging for the wood supply for the paper mill of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company at Covington, the management has been thinking ahead five, ten, twenty, forty years," says Herman Work in “American Forests. ” “The objective is to insure an adequate supply of pulpwood at economic cost in a highly competitive industry. This purpose may sound less human than it really is. It employs people gainfully, furnishes needed | materials, and supplies its share of ; taxes to support the varied activities of government. It takes raw materials ! from a wide field, paying for the : labour and hauling as well as for the | trees themselves. Then it adds value ! to the raw material by use of labour, supplies and machinery, and sends the ! product to a distance, receiving money !in return. The labour and materials I are paid for and the whole transaction ! is closed with nothing hanging over to 5 mar or threaten the future, as there I must be when money is borrowed.” IN DIM RETREAT These verses by U. C. Deike in “Nature Magazine” (America) are a reminder of the plaintive melody of the riroriro (grey-warbler), although the New Zealand bird deserves a better tribute: — I heard a pewee of the wood Before the golden dawn Had etched the weeping willow trees Upon my velvet lawn. Wo-o-e-is-me-e-e! Wo-o-e-is-me-e-e! The sad bird seemed to say From deep within a cloistered dell Where hermit thrushes pray. His melody came plaintively And hauntingly inside. As ir to tell that in the night A faithful love had died. ; Away with melancholia. I And sink it in the sea; j And scatter wide they doctor's bill Upon the wind-swept lea. ! Make strong thy lungs, thy life is young, i The gem of health procure, j Available to serf and king, I Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.