BELL-BIRDS AND TUIS.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10863, 12 January 1901, Page 6

BELL-BIRDS AND TUIS.

nrarTlie Loud of the Tui and the Bell-bird" lias long been a favourite amongst the many fanciful titles under which New Zealand may be described. To New Zea- ' land writers this description should 1 seem especially justified, for no discovered birds ever httd a speedier or more successful acceptance in literature. , Tliey appeared with the first published record- o! New Zealand, in. Hawkesworth's well-known passage, based on "Banks's Journal"; —"In the morning we were awakened by the singing of the bh^ds; the number was incredible, and they ssemed to strain thedr throats in emulation of each other. This wild melody was infinitely superior to any that we , liad ever heard of the same kind: it seemed to be .like • small bells, most exquisitely tuned." Naturally, every traveller thereafter had to report, as could Lady Martin, so late as 1846: "We did hear the birds, as Captain Cook had described; Pirst the bellr bird gave its clear, full note, and then came , such a jargoning as made one's heart glad." As for the poets, when these natural birdcompanions arose, tuis and bell-birds inspired at once some of the most charming passages in New Zealand verse. Some writers, indeed, retire from competition "Where the bell-bird sets solitudes Many have heard and thrown down 3 My lyre in despair of all singing," ■ says F. Napier Broome, in bia "Leave-tak- ' ing." But more often they delight in der scribing bush haunts, i "Where, beneath the creepers tangled. I „ Come the tui"s liquid calLs, And the plash of waterfalls," as one of the poets, latest-grown, Arthur Adams, sings in "Maoriknd. , Again, his "herald tui, moroing-gladtlened," gives a c fine verse; and a Dunedin writer, "Roslyn," has "Down through the hush of the lonely bush Heard over the kowhui float, P Abruptly sweet us a sitver bell: The tuiVrepeated note." r This, however, appears rather to transfei § the note of the one bird to the other, as p we suspect Mrs Glenny Wilson ha* clone t in her "Fairyland." f "The wind in the 'tree-tops waa scarcely » heard, 1 The streamlet repeated its one silver word, - And far away, o'er the depths of woodland, Floated the bell of tiie parson-bird." .' One poetic element, we regret to thipk, is g common, both to beill-bird and tui. Bracken ] predicted early that ;1 "Melodious trills from feathered exiles' throats "" Will sileoce all the tui's simple notes." B And W. P. Reeves has expressed a kindred B fear in the "Passing of the Forest": * "Gone are the forest birds, arboreal tilings, i Eaters of 'honey, honey-sweet in song; Tihe tui and the "bell-bird—he Avho sings That brief rich music jone would fain B prolong." * Alexander Bathgate, with his "Address, to 0 the Mako-mako, or Bell-bird," adds a footnote, "Now rapidly dying out-of pur land," and quaintly accounts in his verse for its disappearance. "Some say the stranger honey-bee, 0 By white men brought, a This ill ihfitb wrought. c It steals the honey from the tree And it leaves thee naught." '" Thus a "wistful regret"—with or without * the scientific explanation—is the keynote of !> most recent tui and bell-bird poems. They '' form a sad and truthful comment upon that 6 first bird-flight, in "incredible numbers."