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Preface.

If half a loaf is better not only than no bread at all, it is also better than overmuch bread. Readers become surfeited with topics not of everyday interest; books such as ‘Bird Life on Island and Shore’ should be swallowed at a single gulp. Unless read in one effort, they are never finished—hence an attenuated volume, hence a brief preface.

A few words, nevertheless, on the general subject of ornithology in New Zealand during the first quarter of the twentieth century may not come amiss, the more so as carelessness in regard to the avifauna of the Dominion and its intimately allied subject, forestry, seems to have spent itself.

Heretofore on behalf of our native birds and our native trees there have been heard only the voices of one or two crying in the wilderness. Now these eccentrics are about to have the backing of the staff of a great Government department, the Forest Service.

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Excellent as is in itself the maintenance of such forests as remain, such conservation has an additional value in that the rescue of woodlands cannot but mean rescue of their inhabitants; it cannot but mean intelligent appreciation of both—nature watched close is nature cared for.

Like all labour such as gardening, bee-keeping, fruit-growing, agriculture—work dealing at firsthand with the soil,—it calls forth the faculty of observation, the faculty which was, I suppose, the primal assistant sense to ancestral man in his struggle for life: our forbears, who reasoned on the evolution of the sabre-toothed tiger, stood but a meagre chance in comparison with those who noted the depredations of the monster, the disappearance of their offspring, and removed themselves from the precarious locality. Few, in fact, of us are reasoning animals, but every man surely on one subject or another can note and learn.

With wiser views as to the indispensability of trees and birds, it may now be expected that our ruined forests will be encouraged to re-establish themselves, this time not valued only by the few for æsthetic or biological reasons but wholeheartedly and open-facedly by all for commercial purposes; for certain it is that until humanity can be content to care for objects lovely in themselves, for themselves, and to enjoy beauty without page ix thought of ulterior profit, only the fortunate plants, animals, and birds to which financial interests have attached themselves are out of danger.

In view, indeed, of the general indifference and apathy towards keeping the world's minor interests in birds and beasts alive, I have often wished that such important groups as, say, the Humming Birds of South America or the Birds of Paradise of New Guinea were leased to great plumage firms in Paris, London, and New York. They would then be bred for profit like ostriches, and killed in reason and season. They would be as secure to the coming race as the merino in Australia or the Romney Marsh in our own Dominion; in truth, a Society to breed wild animals and sell them as pets or for their pelts or plumage, ivory or horns, would do more for the perpetuation of species than all the Protection Societies in the world.

We do, in fact, begin to see examples of such enlightened selfishness at work in the case of foxes and other fur-bearing species. We have the grouse and partridge bred for sport, and therefore preserved. Why not extend the principle?

I don't say, be it here remarked, that this is the ideal plan, but folk who live in the world as it is must adapt themselves to its imperfections. page x As Mrs Gamp has pointed out, we are born into a “wale of tears,” and must take the consequences of being “found in sich a sitivation.” It remains for us to make it less of a “wale of tears” by conserving for the future everything precious and picturesque. Why should we paint life drab for the unfortunates who have yet to come? Why should man and the rat possess the face of the habitable globe? Why should the sparrow be the only bird? I don' say we shall quite come to that, but certain it is that with every species eliminated, by so much is the world robbed of light and colour.

In that fatal annihilation of irreplaceable forms of life, the equivalents of Scott and Shakespeare or Burns and Keats and Wordsworth are sacrificed. Heaven help us poor mortals if an abominable utilitarianism is to chill the world like an eclipse, if what we call civilisation is to mean only the survival of man, if Bread and the Circus is to be the aspiration of all mankind. We collect and treasure lovely plants from every range and valley the world over. Why not at least in their own localities ensure the birds and animals of the world?

We have then in 1925 reached a point when quite a considerable minority are realising the evils of the past—sins of wanton forest fires, insensibility in regard to diminution of bird life. page xi This, though merely negative, a mere halt in spoliation, a mere enactment of the elder Testamental canon “Thou shalt not kill,” is at any rate a first step in the right direction.

The next must be a positive forward move. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Thou shalt plant and replant the forests. Thou shalt protect the avifauna so vital to these forests' health and growth.

I believe that even now by trapping—for the killing of undesirable aliens in our woods can no longer be postponed,—as also by judicious encouragement of natural food supplies, native birds could be quickly increased. Easily might indigenous berries, drupes, and nectariferous shrubs be fostered and multiplied, but why proceed to emphasise the obvious? All these good things shall be added unto us once the forests come to be respected as national assets, and managed by an experienced and observant Forest Service.

Harking back to actual present conditions, of species existent in 1880, when I reached New Zealand but three have disappeared—the Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris), the North Island Thrush (Turnagra tanagra), and the South Island Thrush (Turnagra crassirostris). Moreover, excepting of the first, even that cannot be said with certainty. The numbers doubtless of many other species have woefully decreased, yet at any rate the page xii breed survives, and that to my mind is the vital matter. With care and knowledge of breeding and feeding habits, the numbers of a species can be multiplied at will.

On the whole, therefore, the future of the New Zealand avifauna can be viewed with less of despondency than at any date since the arrival of the white settler. Since the coming of Cook, it has been the whole duty of man to destroy the indigenous vegetation of New Zealand. Now at last he has learned that much land that will grow forest will not profitably grow grass. He is discovering, too, that timber is a crop that carries at least as large a population to the acre as clover or rye-grass—and timber cannot grow without birds. Happy New Zealand, then, if with the re-establishment of her glorious woods a huge increase of land workers can be anticipated, each after the manner of the Dominion master of his own house, his own garden, his own cows, his own bees, his own freehold; intelligent because in direct touch with nature; a population not composed of automatons as in great cities, who press buttons for their daily needs, and hardly know of trees and grass but on the arid cinema. In forests yet to be, coming generations of New Zealanders will listen to the song of the woods as it was heard and recorded a century ago by Cook.