spear-grass (Aciphylla) and cabbage-tree [Cordyline], and snow-grass [Danthonia sp.]”. Several of my correspondents note the fact that keas eat “roots,” though they are not in agreement as to what the roots are. Mr. Taylor White (8) suggests—though, on what evidence does not appear—that the bird feeds on “lichens which cover the rocks in high mountainous regions.” This, it seems to me, would be a very innutritious diet, and it is little likely that, in the presence of a fairly abundant choice of juicy berries and other fruits, the bird would touch so poor a food. But it appears from his article that there were no berry-bearing subalpine shrubs in the locality he was acquainted with. Certainly around the “Hermitage,” in the Mount Cook district, the subalpine scrub is abundant, and lichens would, one imagines, be the last resort of the bird. Mr. McGregor writes, “I have watched a kea picking grubs out of a dead tree, and frequently noticed them picking into the earth for roots, with their beaks.” But none of the above observers, or, so far as I can ascertain, any one else, seems to have examined the crops of any of the birds in an untroubled district—where, that is, the carnivorous habit has not shown itself—so that it is difficult to determine with absolute certainty the whole range of the normal diet of the bird. The Origin of the Carnivorous Habit. The above being its normal food, how has it come about that the bird has taken to eating mutton? Various suppositions have been put forward. One of these may at once be disposed of. It has been suggested that the kea mistook a sheep lying down for the plants termed by settlers the “vegetable sheep” (Raoulia mammillaris and R. eximia)! Thus Mr. (now Judge) F. R. Chapman wrote some years ago (7), “It is said that the keas tear them (the plants) up with their powerful beaks, and that these birds learnt to eat mutton through mistaking dead sheep for masses of Raoulia.” Now, as a matter of fact, these large species of Raoulia do not occur in the Wanaka district, nor on the Southern Alps in the neighbourhood of Mount Cook. None of my correspondents, all of whom know the country round Wanaka well, mention the plant as providing any sort of food for the kea. I think that Mr. Chapman must have been misled. Further, it is extremely doubtful (see later) whether the keas devour “dead” sheep—i.e., such as are found lying on the hills, that may have died of “natural causes”—one, in short, that the birds have not killed themselves.