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much more lively and wideawake, which may be due to age or condition. This fact shows that it is not fair to estimate the character of a race from a single specimen or even from a few individuals. At first I was surprised at the quantity of food they ate, but soon I found it was the rats that were eating most of it. The rats know how harmless the roas are for offence, and go right into their box for the food. They do not take kindly to fish or meat at first; they often refused it when we had them in cages for removal to the islands. So now I do not trouble them the first night, but the second evening I catch them and make them eat a few pieces, and the night after they will eat it themselves. I knew they ate a few berries in their own homes, and, fearing fish might be too monotonous, I rolled it in oatmeal, until now they will eat porridge by itself. In the daytime they sleep huddled up together, though at first they would fight, not being mates, but now they seem to be the best of friends. I made a dark den for them, but they would not go into it, preferring to sleep behind it, under the log, where I can see them shivering with the cold, and annoyed by the sandflies. The male is always much smaller than the female, and this one is moulting, which makes him look smaller still; so he gets in a nook inside, and the female sits close to him and almost over him, as if to keep him warm. There is only a round ball of their brown drooping feathers to be seen, and perhaps the point of the long beak clear of the feathers in some unexpected place. When disturbed they lift their sleepy-looking heads from under the mantle of long feathers on the shoulders, where one would think them safe from sandflies, but I often see dots of blood around the eyes and mouth, for the flies are very insidious, and may bite severely without leaving a trace. Where there were no sandflies they might thrive much better than they do here ; and, as they are so easily enclosed, it is a wonder every extensive garden has not a pair, for there is no doubt about their value, because they are specially fitted for finding the garden-pests that can so easily hide from jabbering sparrows and other musical humbugs that came here under false pretences. The song of the roa is not very musical, but might become sweeter by association than our blackbirds and thrushes that pay us in whistles for stealing our fruit; while roas are humble, and so harmless that they will not even scratch the ground, but probe it with their slender beaks, guided by scent and hearing in the night-time, and then go to their holes at daylight, only to come out again when the other workers are going to bed. There can be no harm in speculating about how these curious birds came to New Zealand, for there are no degrees in ignorance when nobody knows. Men may have done the mysterious distribution as part of their business here. The fact of finding no geological proof only amounts to the silly man's evidence when he offered to bring a dozen men to swear that they did not see him steal a spade. We know that men are eminently fitted for such work, and that they have been at it as long as we know anything about them; then, why not previously? They brought lions and tigers to Rome about two thousand years ago. There are as wonderful ruins in Java as there are in Egypt, and some of the Rajahs keep pet tigers there to-day. Then why not formerly, when perhaps they brought them as far as the Romans did, and even across " Wallace's line"? Even the sea-shells benefit more than half the living things by extracting the surplus lime that might poison the fish. Then why should not the ablest have useful work to do for the community ? Recent research suggests the probability of roas originating from birds that could fly. That is a very good story, but there is not nearly enough of it, because they must have had many adventures since they first flew up for a skite round some Old-World mountain-tops and got blown away to New Zealand. In the first place, they found no enemies in the New Zealand scrub, or they would not have lost their wings ; and possibly there were swift hawks about that made them afraid to show themselves until they quite forgot about their wings. There might have been a long period of cold, when roas were the fittest to survive as long as any forest remained. There may have been a sinking of the land, when such mountaineers as roas would be the most likely to survive, with their varied food ; and when the land rose again some of them may have gone down relieved of enemies, and developed into moas in the fruitful valleys; for nature takes no heed of time in fitting her people for their surroundings. And even now no more perfect fit exists than that of the roas for their dominions. Their feathers are hairy at the tips and hard to wet or disarrange, yet soft and downy at the roots, amply warm and waterproof; and their skins are thick and oily, as if to defy the everlasting damp of the shady forest, where they never feel a gleam of sunshine. As their food is in the ground, on the steep hill-sides, they have powerful legs for climbing, with strong spurs on their heels to let them go down steep and slippery places with ease and safety. The wing is no bigger than one of their toes, and naked with the exception of a row of little penfeathers, in memory of the old quills of long ago ; while the tiny shoulder is useful as a rest for the beak when asleep. The wonderful beak is long, slender, and slightly curved, but, unlike all others, with the nostrils at the very tip, which fit it for finding its food deep in the moss and roots, where it has no competitors. It has also cutting-edges, which I was not aware of until I saw them rasping a lath of the cage. It is white when alive, and partly transparent when recently dead, showing a net-work of blood-vessels, as if highly sensitive for feeling its food at the bottom of the holes. Those holes are the size of a pencil when in earth, and 4 in. or 5 in. deep, but when in moss are cone-shaped, as if made with the head, and perhaps 10 in. deep, thus showing how acute their scent and hearing must be to locate some silent grub or worm down there. Only in a garden in the evening or bright moonlight can one be seen at work. Then it lifts its foot and puts it down so gently, with its neck outstretched and ear forward, in a listening attitude, that I am almost