Introduced species

One of my Parliamentary supporters suggested that we had no need of these foreign dainties. For his part he was content with the native products of his own country, and if he were a Minister he would not pester himself ransacking Asia, Africa and America for exotics. My friend’s hair was disposed to stand on end when I told him that wheat, potatoes, and tobacco, which he found necessary to his daily comfort, were once foreign exotics, and that we had to ransack Asia, Africa, and America for such familiar friends of today as tea, coffee, and rice, and that the fig and even the grape were as foreign to our forebears as the mango was to us. But ignorance is not easily abashed. Another member whispered, ‘Let us alone with your new industries. You see what has come of them already. A Scot introduced their charming thistle, and we will have to put a sum on the estimates to extirpate it. Edward Wilson introduced the sparrow, and the sparrow is playing havoc with our vineyards. Some busybody introduced the rabbit, and the income of Ballarat would not save us from the consequences.’
— Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, My Life in Two Hemispheres. 2 vols: London: 1898, reprinted Shannon: Irish University Press, 1969, pages 322-323.

Apparently, not so long ago, in the 1930s, I believe, a Mr Cochrane decided to plant some heather in the lowlands here, and it spread like purple wildfire.
— J. B Priestley (1894 – 1984), A Visit to New Zealand, Heinemann, 1974.

The Observatory was but a quarter of a mile distant, but in the forenoon, and under a Victorian sun, we had a mauvais quart d’heure in getting there. On the way, amidst some coarse grass, I beheld a scarlet pimpernel, the veritable ‘poor man’s weatherglass’ of northern Europe, basking wide open in the rays. If I had been studying the language of the New Hebrides, and had found imbedded in it a Greek verb, perfect in all its inflexions, I could not have been more surprised. How in the wide world came a highly organised plant of this kind to be growing wild in Australia? Had the seed been brought by some ship’s crew, or in a bird’s stomach, or been wafted over in the chambers of the air? To what far-off connection did it point of Australia with the old world? I gathered my marvel, and carried it to Mr Ellery [the astronomer at the observatory] to be explained. How idly we let our imagination wander! He laughed as he said, ‘Many weeds and wild flowers from the old country make their first appearance in this garden. Our instruments are sent out packed in hay.’
— J. A. Froude (1818 – 1894), Oceana, 1886.

 [The disease referred to in this next passage is fowl cholera: while it may not have harmed livestock, it would have killed poultry, and presumably other native birds as well.]

I was asked what Australia might expect to gain if our brilliant compatriot Monsieur Pasteur were paid the five hundred thousand francs offered to whomever could discover a way of killing the rabbits swiftly and surely, without risk to the cattle or anything else. The two young men sent to Sydney by Monsieur Pasteur to set up a laboratory (one of whom is the nephew of the famous scientist) conducted an experiment that seemed to leave no doubt in the minds of the most incredulous. Sheep, cattle, horses and rabbits were all taken to an island where the first three groups, plus twenty of the rabbits, were injected with a virus known to have caused death in two other rabbits. The infected rabbits spread the disease among all the others, and they all died. The other animals were not affected by the virus, and seemed to be better than ever.

The proof was very clear, and it would have needed a very ill will not to be persuaded by it. Yet the prize of five hundred thousand francs has not yet been handed over to Monsieur Pasteur, and the rabbits, masters of all they surveyed, continue to multiply. Much was said to delay the end to the affair; for example that the experiment might fail if conducted on a large scale, in spite of its unqualified success in a small way. It was also suggested that although the virus had no effect on sheep, cattle, and horses, it might have some on the birds of prey that eat the dead rabbits, and which are needed to clear the fields of dead animals. But what is to stop someone from getting a number of these birds and injecting them with the virus? If this last part of the experiment is put off, it is surely because it is suspected that these useful birds will be no more susceptible to the virus than the cattle. The truth of the matter is that they are trying to discover Monsieur Pasteur’s secret, more perhaps in order to save their national pride than the five hundred thousand francs. The Australians would like to find their own cure for the plague.
— Oscar Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Gold Mines, translated by Judith Armstrong. Adelaide: Rigby, 1980, originally published as Au Pays des Kangourous et des Mines d’or. Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1890, pages 86-87.

You will find an index to this blog at the foot of this link. Please be patient: I am pedalling as fast as I can.