The destructive ubiquitous sparrow and starling are always with us, but the beautiful tui, the kaka, wood-pigeon (or dove), the paroquet, wood-hen, robin, etc., are back numbers.
In Tapanui Bush it was once possible to see thousands of kakas in a day, and pigeons by the hundred.
The lovely parson-bird swarmed, and his cheerful note could be heard in the bush at any hour of the day.
Now, thanks largely to imported vermin, all these birds are disappearing, or have gone entirely.
On Kelso Flat as late as the seventies, before the days of pastoral settlement, kakas were to be seen by the million.
• The formation of a new company to run steamers between Dunedin and Portobello has just been concluded.
The company acquires from Mr Archibald Weir his interest in the Moerangi (at present running in the harbour) and the s.s.
Matangi, a new ferry boat the building of which has just been completed by Messrs Logan Bros., of Auckland, to Mr Weir's order.
The new steamer is capable of carrying 500 passengers.
It is anticipated that the trip from Dunedin to Portobello, including all stoppages, will be done within an hour.
• OTTAWA: Ordinarily the colour line is not sharply drawn in Canada.
The sympathy with the slaves, which sprang up prior to and during the American civil war, and which led to this country being made an asylum for thousands of refugees, still exists in a passive attitude toward at least our own negro population.
In Western Ontario there are thousands of these coloured people, many of them industrious, educated, and fairly prosperous.
We have none of the race troubles which rack the Southern States.
But an incident which happened the other day shows that there is even here some feeling against the coloured man.
A West Indian, with negro blood in his veins, had been in the service of the Canadian-Pacific railway for 20 years as a telegraph operator.
Recently he was promoted to a position of some authority over others, and immediately a portion of the staff under him quitted work.
They were Americans, it is true, but the affair shows the existence of a sentiment from which we thought ourselves quite free. - ODT, 21.11.1908
