SOME FREAKS OF NATURE
Sinbad, the Sailor, the bird expert of the Arabian Nights, should
have come to New Zealand. Here he would have found a bird as tall as
a giraffe that laid eggs as big as a pumpkin. Sindbad was never able
to prove that his roc really existed, but if you will come out to New
Zealand, you can see for yourself remains of its giant bird, the moa.
There is a stuffed one at Christchurch, besides the skeletons of a
dozen others. I have examined the real eggs the moa laid when it trod
the soil of this country a century or so ago.
The great moa is supposed to be the biggest bird ever created. I sat
down before the huge model of it in the museum at Christchurch and made
these notes: “If I were to stand under the bird its tail feathers would
tickle the top of my head. Its ankle is as big around as my calf and
its gray body is the size of a small haystack. Its tall, thin neck is
stretched so high above its breast that Barnum’s circus managers would
have had a hard time getting the animal into a freight car. Its legs
are as strong as those of a camel, and it looks quite as big as the
biggest ‘ship of the desert.’ Its enormous feet have claws much like
those of a turkey, save that each is a foot long. I doubt not the moa
could have stamped out the life of a man at one kick.” Beside one of
the skeletons is placed the skeleton of an ordinary man. The head of
the bird rises at least eight feet above the skull of the man.
[Illustration: Next to the kauri pine, the totara is the most valuable
timber tree of the Dominion. The country has been denuded of so much of
its forests that conservation policies have become necessary.]
[Illustration: On the slopes of Mt. Cook near the Tasman Glacier the
government has established a sanctuary for the kea parrot, which is
elsewhere destroyed on sight because of its sheep-killing habit.]
The bones of the moa were first discovered about eighty years ago, and
later great quantities of them were found. The bird existed in New
Zealand within a comparatively recent period and there are Maoris who
say that their forefathers knew of it. The probability is that it was
here long before the Maoris came, and there is no doubt that it was
once hunted and eaten in great numbers. In old ovens that have been
excavated bones of cooked moa have been found. But as for who the moa
hunters were and when they lived, no one knows.
The moa eggs were each about a foot long. One was found some years
ago by a labourer digging the foundation of a house. He had gone down
several feet when he came upon the skeleton of a man in a sitting
posture. The egg was held in the skeleton’s bony fingers in such
a manner as to bring it immediately opposite the mouth, and it is
supposed that it was placed there with the idea that the ghost of the
dead might have something to eat during the intervals of his long
sleep. The stone spear and axe by the side of the man showed that he
was probably a warrior, and his skull bore evidence of having received
several hard knocks, possibly on the battlefield. The egg was ten
inches long and seven inches in diameter and its shell was about as
thick as a twenty-five-cent piece. It was perfectly empty, but whether
time or the dead warrior had sucked out the contents the records do not
say.
Though a bird, the moa had no wings. It seems to have been a giant
edition of some of the strange birds New Zealand has now; for there
are to-day in the Dominion wingless birds not larger than good-sized
chickens. I refer to the kiwis, some of which I have seen alive here
at Christchurch. I have had several of them in my hands, and by feeling
carefully I found what seemed like a little lump on each side where
the wings ought to be. Some say that the kiwi is without wings because
the dense growth of the New Zealand bush prevented its flights and
so, through the ages, it lost its wings for lack of use. It makes up
for this deficiency, however, by its swiftness of foot. It runs very
fast, with its body held in an oblique position and its neck stretched
forward. This bird has hair-like feathers of somewhat the colour of a
quail, and a long bill, sharp at the point, with which it can bore down
into the mud for worms. Its legs are much like those of the moa.
The kiwi is a night bird. At Canterbury College, where I saw them, the
birds were penned up like chickens and had to be brought out of the
coop for me to examine them. They seemed almost blinded by the light
and ran about this way and that in apparent terror. Kiwis are becoming
scarce in New Zealand, for the Maoris are fond of them as food, and
their feathers are highly prized for cloaks. They are now to be found
only in the dense beds of ferns covering parts of New Zealand. It is
difficult to catch them, for they look much like the dead fern leaves
and take refuge in crevices in the rocks and in the deep holes that
they dig in the ground for their nests. They used to be hunted with
dogs.
One of the most curious things about this bird is the size of its egg,
which is almost as big as the kiwi itself. It is a creamy white colour
and as smooth and as glossy as ivory.
Another New Zealand bird quite as strange as the kiwi is the kea
parrot, which kills sheep. Thousands of sheep have been destroyed by
these birds, the loss from them being so great that the government
pays a bounty of one dollar a head. As many as fifteen thousand keas
have been killed in a year, though they are no longer as numerous as
formerly. The kea has fastidious tastes. It does not care for any part
of the sheep except the kidneys and the fat surrounding them. It has
become as expert in anatomy as a surgeon and has learned just where the
sheep’s kidneys lie. I am told that it strikes the right spot every
time. Fastening its talons into the wool on the animal’s back it bores
with its bill into the side of the sheep directly over the kidneys,
making a hole as smooth as though the flesh had been cut round with a
knife. The kea tears out the kidneys and the fat, and then leaves the
sheep to die in great agony.
There are different theories as to how keas acquired this strange
taste. Until sheep were introduced into New Zealand the birds had lived
on berries and insects. Then they began to pick the meat from the sheep
skins hung up to dry. Later on they attacked the live sheep, and after
a time, having discovered the kidneys, ignored every other part of the
animal. Whether the birds talk to each other or not I do not know,
but they hand on to one another as effectively as though they had a
language their gruesome way of butchering sheep.
There is one place in the Dominion where the kea’s life is safe. This
is at the Hermitage, on the sunny slopes of Mount Cook, where the
government maintains a sanctuary, in order that this parrot may not
become entirely extinct. The Hermitage is the starting place for those
who try to scale New Zealand’s loftiest mountain, and some of the
people who have stayed there bring back stories of the doings of the
keas. They are great thieves, and one woman tells how her moccasins
were stolen from the windowsill of her room. Others complain of being
kept awake at night by the keas squawking and clawing up and down on
the corrugated-iron roof of the hotel. If the birds get hold of a
pillow they will tear it all to pieces, perhaps thinking that inside
the soft substance they will find some of the kidney fat they love.
Kiwis and keas are, however, but a few of the freaks that Mother Nature
has placed in this out-of-the-way part of the world. There are others
so strange that I hesitate to mention them. In New Zealand there are
no kangaroos, but there are marsupial rats here, and I saw at the
college a mouse not much larger than a good-sized cricket with a pouch
for bringing up its young. This mouse, which is one of the smallest
marsupials known, is now very rare. It is a part of the biological
collection of the college museum at Christchurch, and was shown me by
the chief biologist. He showed me also a live lizard, the tuatera,
which is a descendant of a family of three-eyed lizards. The third
eye is in the middle of the head and, is clearly visible through the
skin of the young animal, but becomes thickly covered when he reaches
maturity. The scientists say there is little doubt that this eye was
once used. The lizard I looked at was about a foot long, and, I should
say, measured two inches in diameter.
But better than the mother mouse and the three-eyed lizard, I liked the
black swans of New Zealand. They are to be seen in all parts of the
islands, and one can shoot them anywhere around the lakes. They are
even more beautiful than the white swans, and as they sail along in
the water their feathers look just like black plush. Then there are the
swamp hens which, with their bright blue bodies and red legs, look, as
a woman who had been in the United States said to me the other day,
“like your Mystic Shriners on parade.”
I must not forget to mention the strangest pet any country ever had.
This was a dolphin, the only whale I ever heard of which had its own
special act of Parliament. When passing through Pelorus Sound on the
trip between Wellington on the North Island and Nelson on the South
Island one always hears the story of “Pelorus Jack.” He was a big
silvery gray fellow, different from all the other whales in these
waters, and he had a habit of going out to meet incoming ships. He
would escort them for miles and then go back to his own haunts. He
would play about the vessels and even rub himself against their sides,
and one theory was that he came to the boats so as to rub his back
against their keels, and thus rid himself of parasites. Another was
that he loved playing in the waves ruffled up by the ships.
The fame of “Pelorus Jack” spread until there were tourist trips into
the Sound to see him and Parliament passed a law to protect him, for
there was always a fear that some of the whalers in these waters might
kill him. In fact, it was said that one ship injured him and that he
would never meet that steamer again. But at last he disappeared. Some
hold a party of Norwegian whalers responsible for his death, while
others believe he was killed by one of the mines sowed by a German
raider during the World War. Perhaps he merely died of old age, for the
Maoris claim that he was not under two hundred and seventy-five years
old. Once, it is said, he had a mate, but, if so, he never brought his
wife out to greet the tourists.
New Zealand has some curiosities of vegetable life quite as remarkable
as those of her animal world. One of the strangest is what is known
as the vegetable caterpillar. This looks like a real caterpillar, two
inches long, with a sprout, like a horn, growing out of its head.
When it is full grown the sprout comes out and takes root and becomes
a vigorous plant about eight inches tall, with a single stem, but no
leaf. The only one I have seen was a plant that had been dried after
being taken out of the ground.
I might also speak of New Zealand flax, which I have seen at many
places on the islands. This flax, which grows wild and on swamp lands,
has thick blades about two inches wide and five or six feet long. In
the middle of the clustered blades grows the tall, straight flax stick
with seed pods at the top. The upstanding New Zealand men are often
called “flax sticks.” When the blades are harvested, at intervals of
three years, the green covering is stripped from them, leaving the
fibre exposed. This is washed, hung up to bleach, and then made into
tow and cordage. It competes successfully with the hemp of Manila,
and thousands of tons are exported every year. Of late years the flax
fields have suffered from a small fly which makes holes in the leaves
and so reduces the quantity of good fibre. Since it has been found that
drained swamp lands make the richest dairy farms, it is a question
whether it is best to drain them for cattle runs or leave them to
produce flax.
A product almost as valuable as flax in the export trade of the
Dominion is kauri gum. It is a solidified turpentine, or fossil resin,
which is found in great chunks in the ground in the North Island.
The lumps may be the size of a walnut or as big as a man’s head, and
single pieces have been found weighing as much as one hundred pounds.
It is often as clear as amber, but varies greatly in colour. Sometimes
it is a rich yellow, sometimes brown, and sometimes just the colour
of champagne. Some of the best of it is sold to the manufacturers of
varnish and linoleums, the bulk of it being sent to the United States.
Kauri gum is by no means a cheap article, selling for more than four
hundred and fifty dollars a ton, and the annual export is worth nearly
two million dollars.
Hundreds of men go over the kauri forests with spears and picks looking
for this gum. They drive their spears down into the earth and when
they strike a piece, dig it out. The gum lies within a limited area,
consisting of about seven hundred thousand acres north of Auckland and
about thirty thousand acres southeast of that city. Part of this is
government land, upon which the right to dig kauri is sold at so much a
year.
Most of the diggers are Austrians, but some are Maoris and some
English-Australian settlers. The Austrians make a regular business of
hunting kauri and work in bands of thirty or more. The settlers dig for
the gum when they are not farming, and the Maoris seek it to supplement
their funds when food runs low. Many of the Austrian gum diggers make
more than twenty-five dollars a week.
This gum appears on the kauri pine, a tree that often grows one hundred
and fifty feet high and twelve feet in diameter. The kauri is about
the best timber of New Zealand, and is used largely in building and
furniture making. The gum comes from the great forests of the past
which have rotted away. Some of the standing kauri trees are bled for
their resin like our turpentine forests of the southern states, but
this method is illegal, and most of the product is still obtained from
the deposits in the ground.
Kauri gum is used by the varnish and linoleum manufacturers because
it assimilates oil easily and at low temperatures. As the New Zealand
deposits are worked from year to year the gum gets more and more
expensive and in anticipation of their giving out the question of
substitutes has been studied. China-wood oil, extracted from nuts, and
exported from Hankow, China, is now being extensively used and has
become a keen competitor of kauri.
[Illustration: Kauri gum is the fossilized resin of the kauri pine
forests of the past. It is dug from the ground, and most of it is
exported to the United States to be used in the manufacture of varnish
and linoleum.]
[Illustration: We call a tall, straight person a “bean pole,” but the
New Zealanders say he is a “flax stick,” borrowing their comparison
from the seed-bearing stalk that rises from the centre of the native
flax.]