Oeydromus greyi, Buller. (North Island Woodhen.) This species of Woodhen is still numerous on the wooded hill – sides and mountain gullies in the Murimotu – Taupo country. It is seldom met with in the open country, except at one particular season, when the birds are exceedingly fat, and the natives catch large numbers by running them down with dogs. It is a very remarkable fact in local botany that on the arid lands forming the Onetapu Desert, and on the slopes of Ruapehu Mountain, where the climate is very rigorous, certain native pines, which in the lowlands attain to a considerable height as forest trees, are represented by dwarfed forms of the same species, not more than a few inches in height, and often assuming a creeping habit. These degraded forms, which are specifically identical with their forest relations, resemble them exactly in their fructification. The berries borne by these pigmy growths equal in size, and sometimes even exceed, those of the forest trees,—the fruit of the dwarf totara, for example, being sometimes double the size of the normal berry, while those of the miro, kahikatea, and rimu are at least fully equal to the berries produced by the forest trees. When these miniature woods are laden with ripe mast the Woodhen leaves the shelter of the woods and comes out into the open to revel in plenty. As already stated, the birds then become unusually fat, and, owing to their diminished activity, become an easy prey to the natives. Captain Mairinforms me that he has known of a native with a good dog, ten years ago, killing as many as eighty in a single day. Pigeons and kakas, also, are said to resort to these subalpine woods in considerable numbers to feed on the ripe fruit. When camped on the edge of a red-birch forest near the Mangataramea Stream (at an elevation of 3,000ft.) I heard the loud cry of the Woodhen every night, but I never met with the bird in the open country, and the sheep-farmer with whom I was staying appeared never to have seen one. I was much struck with the beauty of these clumps of bush in the Murimotu highlands, where the Woodhen was so numerous. Some of them consist entirely of kawaka (Libro-cedrus doniana) a very ornamental tree of bright-green foliage and tapering growth, with a trunk like a miniature Sequoia. This is plainly seen when a fire has passed through the forest and left the trees dead and naked. In some places you meet with the strange sight of the whole forest apparently hewn down, and strewing the ground with bleached and charred trunks. The explanation is this: that these trees are generally hollow near the ground, and have only a feeble support of lateral roots. Consequently, when a fire has passed through