To this I reply that Mr. Huddleston's article on the kea is the best I have seen on the subject, and, so far as my own experience goes, is reliable, and for this reason I specially obtained that number of the “Journal of Science” which contained Mr. Huddleston's paper, and forwarded it to Mr. Wallace: hence his letter to me thereon.

It must be remembered that this bird, having for its habitat the tops of alpine ranges, is seen by few other than shepherds and owners of sheep who are hardy enough to head the sheep-mustering parties, and whose business it is to search the rocky mountain-tops in summer for sheep requiring to be shorn or docked, and in winter, about the end of June, to collect, extricate, and drive downward sheep from the then heavily snow-clad summits. An account of this latter dangerous work I gave in a back volume of Transactions. Such are the men who can give the life-history of the kea, and of these I claim to have been one. But such doings are now a matter of retrospection.

Since writing the above I have been able to place my hand on Mr. F. F. C. Huddleston's paper. The passage in “Darwinism” to which he takes exception is the following: “It [the kea] belongs to the family of brush-tongued parrots, and naturally feeds on the honey of flowers and the insects which frequent them, together with such fruits or berries as are found in the region. Till quite recently this composed its whole diet, but since the country it inhabits has been occupied by Europeans it has developed a taste for a carnivorous diet, with alarming results. It began by picking the sheepskins hung out to dry, or the meate in the process of being cured. About 1868 it was first observed to attack living sheep, which had frequently been found with raw and bleeding wounds on their backs. Since then it is stated that the bird actually burrows into the living sheep, eating its way down to the kidneys, which form its special delicacy.”

Mr. Huddleston says,—

“The reason, I believe, that the bird has been charged with eating the kidney of the sheep it attacks is that the loin or rump of the sheep is the broadest part whereon it can get an easy grip. As the sheep feels its assailant it runs away, with the bird holding on and naturally having its beak over the kidneys, where it sets to work. … I have found large numbers of sheep with only a very small hole in the back, about the size of a crown, which being examined showed a cavity beneath as large as a man's hand, in which the backbone and ribs were perfectly bare. Other I found with holes in the side through which the intestines had been drawn, the sheep being still alive, and in some instances the wound had healed and apparently formed

a false anus.” (An instance of a wound healing as described I have witnessed myself—an opening in the flank.—T. W.)

“Besides grubs, as the weta (Deinacrida) and the Cicada, they feed on the berries of various alpine shrubs and trees [? T. W.], such as the snowberry (Gaultheria), Coprosma, Panax, and the little black seed in a white skin of the Phyllo-cladus alpinus; the Pittosporum, with its hard seed in a glutinous mass like birdlime; and the red berry of the Podocarpus; also, in winter, on the roots of the various herbaceous alpine plants—Aciphylla squarrosa and colensoi, Ranunculus lyallii, Celmisias, & c.

“About Mount Cook they breed very early in the year, as I have found their nests in August, when snow was on the ground. The first time that I saw nests at that time of the year was when I was shooting, at an altitude of 3,000ft. I shot a bird that was sitting on a rock. After it fell another appeared on the rock, and from the same place I shot twenty-two. I went to pick up the dead birds, and then found that they had, in the first place, all come out of a hole under the rock. On looking into the hole I saw something moving, which eventually turned out to be young birds. They were out of reach, but after some trouble I managed to noose one, and found that it was in its nesting plumage of slate-coloured down, with very yellow beak and legs. There were others in different stages of growth, also eggs. I have since found other nests, and have noticed that after a time the old birds leave the half-grown ones to hatch out the late eggs, all the community doing their share of feeding the young. The same habit I have noticed in the native parrakeet. The kea's egg is white, and about the size of a pigeon's, but rounder, and with a rough shell. The young birds do not come out of the nest until fully fledged and able to fly. The young birds are so tame that if a person comes across a flock of them and keeps perfectly still they will walk up to him and pull his clothes.

“I am unable to give a correct estimate of the number killed in the Mount Cook and Lake Wakatipu districts. The slaughter of them at times has been very great. At Lake Wanaka, in four years, I myself killed over three thousand, and I know of several up-country stations where one to two hundred were killed yearly. To reduce their numbers the County Councils used to give from 1s. to 2s. per beak, and the Government then gave the Councils a subsidy of pound for pound. This has now been discontinued, and so gives a chance of increase.“^*