With the growth of population even the rabbit ceases to be a serious evil, except to a few half-empty tracts.

The truth is that outside her forests and swamps New Zealand showed the most completely unoccupied soil of any fertile and temperate land on the globe.

It seems possible that until about five or six hundred years ago she had no human inhabitants whatever.
Her lakes and rivers had but few fish, her birds were not specially numerous, her grasses were not to be compared in their nourishing qualities with the English.

Of animals there were virtually none.
Even the rat before mentioned, and the now extinct dog of the Maori villages, were Maori importations from Polynesia not many centuries ago.
Not only, therefore, have English forms of life been of necessity drawn upon to fill the void spaces, but other countries have furnished their quota.

The dark eucalypt of Tasmania, with its heavy-hanging, languid leaves, is the commonest of exotic trees.