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C—l

26th November commence their booming love-songs. These notes do not sound loud when close by, but can be heard many miles away, and may be useful in calling in the females to suitable places for nesting and feeding their young. Under favourable circumstances I have heard it at a distance of six miles, and somehow the humming, murmuring sound made the season appear more lonely and peaceful, giving a faint idea of how it might sound to their half-lost fellows away in the bush. In the virgin forest, where nothing heavier than themselves has ever trodden the yielding moss, they have very distinct pathways, especially going up some small hill, where in the driest place on top a gleam of sunshine may enter among the trees. Here will be several "dusting-holes" and signs of traffic, as if many birds go up there occasionally, either singly or in companies. But this habit of only coming out at night enables them to keep nearly all their social affairs to themselves. When newly hatched the young are covered with snow-white down, and they remain in the nest until nearly full-grown. During this period the mother's feathers are all draggled and worn, and I often wondered how she could tramp away and carry home sufficient food to keep two or three young ones like balls of fat. The males are also very fat, while the mother is like skin-and-bone, and once I thought that, Phoenix-like, she might die when she reared a brood ; but I soon found that idea untenable, though it would in a sort of way account for the intermittent breeding season. When we are hunting for kakapos our fox-terrier is often at fault, running here and there in an excited manner, and finishing by finding nothing. It is a long time since we found one up a tree. In fact, we only got two up trees altogether, and I could not imagine kakapos running away from anything, for I always thought that they knew nothing of enemies. However, I have often got them with one eye out, and with deformed nostrils, as if bitten or bruised. Recently we caught one with part of the skin scraped off the top of the head, and both eyes so severely injured that it was nearly blind. It could not have been a ferret that caused the injuries, because wekas were plentiful, so it must have been another kakapo. One of the last days we were out our dog tracked one up a tall sloping stump, and hunted a light young kakapo off the very top. We saw it flutter down, but it was so artful in hiding that it was some time before we found it. Now, this was a plain case of a light, active young bird trying to avoid a well-known enemy ; and now I am quite satisfied that the old ones—probably the old males —persecute the young ones, and perhaps kill them. We found one just dying, with hardly life enough left to attract the dog. I thought it was starved, and did not look for marks or injuries. This may be only a wise arrangement to prevent too close breeding, for I think it is quite common for many animals to fall out with their young ones when they grow up. At this season, when food is scarce, they are the most unsociable creatures living, for each one seems to have half a square mile to itself. It is surprising how very little one can learn about them, and that only by chance. Though we have been hunting round our tent for a fortnight, and far up the hills, yet one comes out on the beach at the tent every night and coughs and calls, and I have often gone out, but could not get a sight of it. There is just one more little note I have to make —that is, on the scarcity of " scratchingholes " here compared with those at Te Anau. It is true that they are less troubled here with vermin. That may be one reason, and another may be the very great scarcity of anything like dry places in this bush However, we found a hill-top near the south-east corner of Cascade that was nearly covered with pathways and " scratching-holes." The ground all round looked as if there had been an attempt made to clear it of ferns and sticks, and every root was bitten and peeled as if they had tried to remove it. I walked all over it and. had a long look at. it, and somehow the idea was forced on me that this was their play-ground or ball-room, and that if I could come here in the season with the eyes of a cat I might learn something of their social forms and customs. Feathers. The roa's relations in other countries often have two feathers of the same sort on the one stalk, but roas have no sign of them, neither have the kiwis. This may be due to the fine, slender, and sensitive beaks they have to keep a more delicate feather in order. Many birds have a distinct coat of strong feathers for outside wear, and then an inner coat of down ; but the kakapos have both on one stalk, a fine strong one for outside and a distinct downy one for inside, so that both can be lifted off the skm in one act, otherwise they would not be easily kept clean when the birds live so much in holes and have such clumsy beaks to dress them with. The Booming of the Kakapo. On 26th December, 1897, we anchored in Cascade Harbour, and long before dark we heard the kakapos booming, after a silence of two years, and later on in the evening we heard them from all sides, though we had so often hunted there that we thought we had pretty well cleared them out of that place. Seven days previously we were under Mount Pender, where there are plenty of kakapos, but we heard no booming, so that they must have just commenced. At Te Anau they used to commence about the Ist of December, which date they kept to fairly well all the years I was there. Next day we went hunting on the west side of Cascade, aud caught three very fat kakapos. There were no berries or seeds on any of the trees, and we were puzzled to know what they got so fat on. There was a tiny seed or blossom on the carpet of green moss that covers that country, and I often saw little holes that they scraped out with their beaks, perhaps looking for truffles or fungi of some sort; but they chew their food so well in their milling beaks that I could not identify it. It was important to know what they were eating then, because it might solve the mystery as to their intermitting breeding seasons, but I could not find it out. Their crops contained mostly a green pulp, with some of a lighter colour, but what it was I could not tell.