CHAPTER III.
A CHAT ABOUT AUCKLAND.
The interview with the maternal parent proved thoroughly satisfactory, as did the maternal parent herself,—an elderly lady, neatly dressed in black, with silver grey hair, and a face which, before old Father Time had placed his brand on it, must have been very pretty.
I promised to bring my "better half" in the morning to complete arrangements, and hurried home with my oysters, which with some difficulty I succeeded in persuading her to taste. Having once overcome her repugnance to their appearance, she enjoyed a good supper of them, with some bread and butter that I persuaded our hostess to let us have.
Supper over, I detailed my adventures of the evening, to my wife's great delight, and we shortly after retired to bed, but, alas! not to sleep. Before the drowsy god could exert his influence over us, an opposing agent stepped in, and we discovered to our horror that New Zealand numbered among her colonists certain nimble little creatures well known in the old country under the generic name of "Fleas;" the Maori name is "Mōrorohū," which, literally translated, means, I believe, "little stranger." They are supposed by some to represent the first importation of animal life that the English favoured Maoriland with.
Since their too successful introduction, an Acclimatisation Society has been established, and under its auspices many animals and birds of different kinds have been acclimatised. Rabbits and sparrows are, I believe, numbered among its earliest ventures. Within the last year a large number of ferrets, stoats, and weasels have been introduced by the Government to destroy the rabbits, which have proved too many for the settlers in the south island; and probably before long we shall hear of snakes being brought out to kill the sparrows.
What animal will be hit upon to destroy the stoats and weasels when their turn comes—and farmers in the localities where they have been set free already complain bitterly of them—I am at a loss to imagine, though I have no doubt the members of the Society, with the aid of a Natural History, will be able to solve the problem.
The notion possesses me that if the Society continues to flourish we shall eventually become a sort of sea-girt Zoological Garden, and possibly be able to advertise tiger-hunting among the attractions of the New Zealand of the future.