around Studholme's Saddle (4,600ft). A few even appeared on the crest of the range. Poisoning was carried out on a considerable scale at that time and rabbits have not been seen at least at higher altitudes, since 1924. The first red deer, a stray stag, was not reported on Don Juan until 1901, but the strongly marked age gap in mountain-beech regeneration in the Central Kaweka suggests that a considerable deer population built up there at any rate soon after that date. The evidence of changes in deer population in this area without appreciable human interference is of special interest. Japanese deer liberated in 1905 in a valley in the upper Mohaka have comparatively recently started to spread, particularly down the main valley, and have reached the eastern face of the range within the last ten years. Wild sheep have persisted on the higher part of the range since mustering off, and are at the present day well established in spite of attempts to shoot them out. They are of merino type, though it is interesting to note that at the time of mustering off, the original merino flocks had been bred to Romney Marsh for upwards of ten years and merino characteristics were considered to have largely disappeared. Fire Pre-European burning for cultivation is a probability along the slopes of the Mohaka Valley. This practice, described by Elsdon Best as “whakaota”, continued at least up to 1900 in the neighbouring Ahimanawa margins. There are also vague oral traditions of former fires on the eastern face of the range, one of which has it that a single fire ran from Puketitiri to the crest of the range. Though the vegetation of the Blowhard 100 years ago suggests a succession following fire, there is no direct supporting evidence, and the soils indicate that the cover has been fern or tussock over a long period. Colenso (1851–2) mentions recent fires in the lower country (the Blowhard, which he describes as fern country) both in fern and in forest islands, and this, together with the numerous references to burns seen on his travels, suggests that fires had a considerable effect on vegetation before the arrival of Europeans, at any rate near Maori routes and settlements. The first record of deliberate burning in connection with stocking and fern crushing concerns the Blowhard in 1876. In the dry summer of 1878–79, two extensive fires swept the McIntosh Plateau and the crest of the range. Ring counts in beech regeneration at various points in the southern Kaweka date fires as having occurred from the early 1870's up to about 1885, over wide areas from the Taruarau to the Tutaekuri River. More recent fires in limited areas are indicated by traces of spot fires on the McIntosh where scars on trees surrounding charred stumps give two dates, about 1900 and 1910. Even-aged regeneration on either side of Dick's Spur, the main mustering route on the northern end of the Kawekas, gives 1905 as the probable date of the last fire. The Blowhard is particularly vulnerable to fire as it is traversed by the Inland Patea Road. A considerable area of this was swept by a scrub fire in the drought of 1946. Tussock burning is a regular practice at the present day in the upper Taruarau and Ngaruroro valleys, and this affects all the western forest margins with trifling exceptions. In the Ngaawapurua Valley the tussock cover, apparently unaffected by fire in 1931, has deteriorated markedly over the last 25 years, and deterioration appears to be general in all the western tussock. No burning is known to have taken place recently on the tussock of the Manson country, but the stripping of pumice topsoil and the replacement of tussock and forest by celmisia and scrub suggest that deterioration occurred earlier, with fire an important factor.