NATURE—AND MAN.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 404, 13 December 1932, Page 3

NATURE—AND MAN.

VARIOUS SPORTSMEN ZAN-E GREY UPON THE GLORIES OF. N.Z. NEED FOR LONG VIEW. (•Edited by Leo Farming.) I ltnow not "vvhere the white road runs, nor what the hlue hills are; But a man ean have the sun for a friend, and for his guide a star. And there's no end of voyag-ing when once the voice is heard; For the rivers eall, and the roads call, and, oh! the call of a bird. — From Gerald Goulds's "Wanderthirst." Sonie nature-lovera do not see eye to eye with' Zane Grey and othex portsmen who langle for swordfish and mako shark, hut it has to be said for Mr. Grey that — apart from his zest for killing big fish — he has the devotion to nature which filled the heart of Izaak Walton. Now that the American fish-hunter has returned to New Zealand, it is worth while. to recall isome of his tributes to the natural beauty of the Dominion, puhlished in his "Tales of the Anglers Eldorado: New Zealand. The following passages refer to his impressions formed in and about his eamp by the Tongariro River: — "I was awakened by the song of birds. Strange deep hell-like notes, a metallic clink, a lonely plaintive single sound repeated at intervals, land a sweet twittering chorus greeted my ears. listened with growing pleasure. Every note was new to me, and the wildness exquisitely marked. Here, indeed, was some reward for such a journey. Keen was I to make the acquaintance of these wild birds of a far-away land." "Our camp was situated in a grove of tea and kowhai trees. Behind the grove spread an oval green flat, dominated hy two large pine trees. Three poplar trees, also familiar reminders of my native land, stood straight and tall, dressed in the gold of autumn^ which lcontrasted heautifully with the surrounding hright greens. Far on the horizon rose the magnificent mountain range, wreathed at dawn by sun-flushed clouds, el'ear and ■sharp and dark at noonday, and at sunset half-obscured in lilac haze." "The sun had set as I waded in again. A shimmering ethereal light moved over1 the pool. The reflection of the huge bluff resembled a battleship more than the bluff itself. Clear jand hlack-purple rose the mountain range, and golden clouds grew more deeply gold. The river roared ahove and below, deep-toned and full of melody. A cool hreeze drifted down from up'stream." "My eomradas talked volubly on the way back to camp, hut I was silent. I did not feel my heavy wet waders or my leaden hoots. The afterglow of sunset lingered in the west, faint gold and red over the hold hlack range. I heard a late bird sing. The roar of the i*iver floated up at intervals. Tongariro! What a strange, heautiful, high-sounding name! It suited the nohle river and the mountain from which it sprang. Tongariro! It was calling me. It would call to me across the vast lands and leagues of the Pacific. It would draw md back again. Beautiful, green-white thundering Tongariro!" It is safe to say that if Zane Grey decided to remain in New Zealand he would be a fervent supporter of the movement for the preservation of native forest which regulates the flow of 'Streams. Even the most pot-hunt-ing sportsman should he a keen supporter of forest-protection, even from a selfish viewpoint, for a wooded watershed ensures that rivers will retain food and cover for fish. The forest also offers necessary shelter for gamebircis at certain times. Tragedies of the Bush. It is twlight in the f orest. Mr. and Mrs. Kiwi and their chick have heen resting quietly in coy shelter, and now they are ready to fossick for a meal. How proud the parents are of the fluffy chick. How eager they are to hegin feeding it! Away they go down a little track on which the parents have often walked happily. Mr. Kiwi is in front, very alert, but at peace with the world. His keen senses of hearing and smell rexnind him of something good for that chick, and he darts ahead. Snap! A leg is caught in an opossum-hunter's trap', and a islow painful death awaits him while his puzzled family linger moumfully by him. About a hundred and fifty kiwis have heen caught in traps set for wallahies on Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf. More than a hundred kiwis have heen caught in opossumtraps in Rough Yalley, Westland. How much' longer is that kind of outrage to be tolerated? When will the puhlic insist on better protection of the kiwi ?

Sense of Colour. Some scientists isiay that a peacock has no sense of colour, and that all colours are as one, a kind of orange, to birds which are active hy day. Is not that assertion nonsensical ? Anyhody who has ever seen a peacock strut with his widespread flare of rainbow hues knows that the hird has a fullsense of hist colour scheme and a hursting pride in his brilliance. The wonderful evolution of plumiage in many species of birds is evidence, surely, that they are prohahly more colour-conscious than other creatures are. They think in colours, dream in colours, and the colours come. They woo in colours. "In the spring a livelier iris gleams up-on. th'e burnished dove!" What an .old humbug Dame Nature wouid he if, after all the beautiful flashing of the suitors' raiment, and hens saw them al Isimply as .absurdities in orange! Laughter of Lower Creatures. Man imagines vainly that hie is the only animal that has learnt how to laugh, hut his error is revealed at once in the phrase "'asinine laugh" which an tangry man may throw at somebody who is heating him in an argument. Indeed the donkey is prohahly the world's heartiest laugher. The hee-haw of the ass is commonly regarded as an expression of stupidity — hut is it? The donkey prohahly has the laugh on the world. The donkey pretencls to he istupid, because he is lazy, and his hee-haw may he really

bird, the chuckling chorister of the forest. Is there no thought, no conscious amusement, hehind the gurgling laughter of the tui? No person on this earth can prove there is no deliberate merriment in th'e tui's laugh. Nobody hut a perfect food would deny design in the hearty laughter of the Australian kookaburra, comedian of the woods. Parrots also are natural laughers, apart laltogether from their mimicry of human, peals of joy. Even geese have their jokes, and gahble tabou^ them. A Protest Against "All Black." Who was the bright-minded being to wh'om black occurred as a fitting emhlem of New Zealand — the isles. of the fadeless forests, the sparkling waterfalls, the blue lakes, the sunny skies? Why has New Zealand heen so beefily sluggish and unimaginative as to retain that muddled person's mistake? Or did >a committee do it? The word black, too, sounds lilce a hleat of despair. The silver fern gleamis on the black as the white skull and bones did on the pirates' "Jolly Roger." Th'at fsrn looks like an eleetroplated skeleton of the real green frond. -Is that blackness to he suffered for ever? Cannot somabody do something about it? Are all the deputations dead? Does the Government turn a well-eye to the horror? Meanwihile the sill, all 'blackness has been copied by "Soccer" teams, row-