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Near the tops of the mountains ratas will be in full bloom as late as March, while I noted some this year on the 20th August in sunny corners near the water's edge. A cuckoo may lay its egg in the best of the warblers' nests and destroy whole families, instead of hunting up the young ones and taking the weakest of them, as the hawks do. I believe that our long-tailed cuckoo lives principally by robbing birds' nests and eating both the eggs and young ones. Cuckoos were not uncommon a few years ago, and were fond of coming into orchards and into the trees around the farm-houses, but I think that no New Zealand farmer ever lost a chance of shooting them, even when he was greatly pestered with sparrows. The cuckoos are so bold that I have often heard their screams from streets in Dunedin, and so cunning that it is very hard to get a sight of them, so that they might do useful work even yet if we could only get up a friendly feeling towards them, like the Australians have towards their laughing-jackass. In that case it should be remembered that it is probably the little grey warblers that nurse the young cuckoos, and they would need to be respected also, which would be a heavy demand on the forbearance of the boys. However, I have not seen a young long-tailed cuckoo in New Zealand, but I have seen little birds feeding them in Australia, or ones very like them, so that it might be worth while for every farmer to save them, for I believe that migratory birds come back every year to the very spot where they get the best food. This is the very root of the migratory instinct, and the farmer that allows them security may expect them back again if it is a good place for sparrows' nests ; and even if they do little good he may be perfectly satisfied that they will never eat his grain or fruit. The cuckoo's season may be too short for the elastic sparrow's, but we know so very little about them that it w 7 ould be well to give them a good long trial when it will cost us nothing to start with and we have nothing to lose by them. Putting a bird in the Act of Parliament does not seem to enlist the sympathy and assistance of the people, so that it would be as well to keep the cuckoos out of the list and try an appeal on the other side of humanity. Such an appeal has been successful on behalf of many creatures in many countries, and why not in New Zealand? Game laws have such an unpleasant flavour with colonials that they often think that they would be better without the game. In December, 1900, there was a swarm of sparrows around my homestead on Pigeon Island. They were sucking the honey out of the rata-blossoms, and I suppose it was too monotonous, and that they came to my clearing for chickweed-seed. I let them get confidence for a long time, fed them in a spout, and then shot six of them in one shot, and spoiled the confidence of the whole lot —even of those that did not see the shooting. They all knew about that one act, and would not let me look at them afterwards. If I looked towards a mob of them they would fly right away over a hill and would not come back for a while. The honey streamed out of those I shot, and they were as fat as woodhens. The tui and bellbird used to be enemies, but now they go mates to hunt the sparrows; but they made but little difference, for there were too many of them. There were also two grey thrushes sucking the honey and feeding on the sea-beaches alternately, but it is no wonder for them to suck honey, because they are fruit-eaters. I went out to a rata-tree at my window (18th December) and gathered a teaspoonful of that honey in ten minutes with a little glass syringe. At that rate the sparrows could fill their crops in five minutes, and soon get fat. The birds suck the same blossoms for several days, and it is probable that some ratas produce more food than any trees we cultivate, but it was not intended for men. The Panax arboreum also produces a large quantity of honey, and has the same capacious cup for its reception. It blooms much earlier than rata, and continues blooming for a long time. SEAGULLS (LARUS). We were anchored at the end of Sportsman's Cove on Cooper Island, and at our stern was a strip of stony beach at low water. There was a pair of common gulls flying about and dropping down on the beach every now and then to eat something. My boy soon noticed that they took up shells, and let them drop on the stones purposely to break them. It was low tide, and they would fly out into the shallow water, fish up their big cockle, and fly back over the stones to a particular place, only going up 10 ft. or 15 ft., and following it down as quickly as possible as if afraid to lose sight of it; then they would worry it on the beach, or take it up again and drop it. One shell I saw taken up four times, not higher each time, as common-sense would point out, but anyhow, perhaps breaking it with quite a little fall. I suppose the gulls knew that it depended as much upon how and where it fell as it did upon the height. While at lunch I took the time, and saw one of them take up eight shells in fifteen minutes. At that rate they ought to have had the beach covered with broken shells, but it was not so, which suggested that they were only having lunch there. There are great beds of these cockles at the mouths of nearly all the big creeks, and gulls are plentiful, yet I never saw them breaking cockles before, nor have I seen them anywhere else but there, though I know that they are nearly always very hungry. Therefore the cockles must either disagree with them, or the art is a trade secret with the Cooper Island gulls.* I have taught one of them to come for scraps of fish, but it was very hard to tame, and has taken about three years to get a little confidence. It can swallow the biggest rat I ever caught on Pigeon Island, and on one occasion it ate one every morning for five mornings running, and was out there waiting for the sixth, but I did not catch it. At Te Anau Lake I had a great dislike for them, because I often saw them catching young ducks. If a family of ducklings got dispersed so that the parents could not protect them all, and

* Since writing the above I find that the fishermen have often seen the gulls breaking shells by letting them fall on the hard stones.