FROM NATURE'S BOOK.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12776, 21 October 1919, Page 2

FROM NATURE'S BOOK.

NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY IN NEW ZEALAND.

By J. DRUMMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S

“A few weeks ago,” Dr Rudolf Haeusler writes from Glanvillc Terrace, Parnell, “you published a statement that persons who live in New Zealand forests sometitnes fancy that they hear amongst the trees mysterious human voices. One of your correspondents states that primitive peoples believe in unseen presences in the forests, and that a few Europeans who have lived much alone in forests share the belief- There is no doubt as to some beliefs being the result of imagination; but I am convinced that your correspondents’ reports are based on facts. I will briefly describe an incident that may supply a simple explanation of the mystery. One evening stone year's ago, when I lived in the Waikato district, my son and I were surprised to hear apparently a heated argument between two old men near a lonely gully. We discovered that the sound's were not the voices of human beings, but of two morepovk owls, which, evil dently, were courting in a big tree. They were so absorbed in their own affairs that they allowed us to go close to the tree, and wo were able to watch them for a long time. The variety of the sounds they made was very surprising. At times wo seemed to hear two people tailring in moderately loud tones. This seemed to be followed by an angry argument. The voices then became as soft as the voices of human beings in a sick room, sinking almost to a whisper. Although the owls did not move from the branch, their voices sometimes seemed to come from long distances, first from one dnection, then from another direction, as ii they belonged to a. clever ventrilocpnst. This, explains the difficulty of locating exactly the source of voices heard in the hearts of New Zealand forests.” The subject brings to mind Henry 1 hoie aus fancies in the Concord fores s. tie created imaginary human beings amongst the trees, but he did it m ins own transcendental style. After the memorable two years spent as a hermit on the shores of Walden Pond, he said that “ it is as if I always met ;i!n SO - n L aCe :V ome add serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisibJe companion, and walked with \ im ' r There at least my nerves are steadied, my senses and my mind do their office.” Some of his critics have accepted these and .similar statements as evidence that he was fastidious and misanthropic; but one of his biographers has pointed out that if ho had been confirmed m those traits ho could not nine drawn his humorous sketches of sturdy Concord farmers, of the woodchopper who visited him at Walden, of the old brown-coated fisherman who haunted the hanks of the Musketaquid, or of the drunken Dutchman on a Now lork steamboat. •x *Lh, H ? ns f n , has , Writton to make clear that sharks do not necessarily * lelr . hacks t° bite. He states m< ? ut t S i the skate,' of the stingray and of other members of the ray family are overhung quite as much thinha of s ; harks > nobody habit t n b have this peculiar habit. He finds further evidence against the theory m the fact that all, or nearly all, species of sharks nL u S ;iro ground feeders, and he cannot imagine how • anv shark could take a piece of food from the bottom if it turned on its hack to do so. Another bit oP had natural history he writes, “is the theory that the cuttlefish, or octopus, ejects a brownish substance, known a s sepia, m order to confuse its enemies and evado - pursuit and capture. It does not eject the sepia. If it did eject it, the quantity would be insufficient to obscure, as much water as would go in a, bucket. I have caught scores of these creatures, and have seen other people catch them, and I have never seen the sepia ejected, and only one man, of many I have asked, confessed that ho had seen the ruse.” i ' L young lady, who is staving with -\ lr Hansen’s family at the Taiaroa Head Lighthouse, at the beginning of month discovered a hedge sparrow s nest, containing four pretty greenish blue eggs, in an unusual position. It is almost on the ground, in the heart of a bunch of creepers at the foot of the light station’s foe signal. “I don’t know what will happen if wo have to fire the fog signal,” Mr Hanson says, “as it makes the deuce of a vow, but the owner of the nest probahiv is used to it.” Mr Hansen’s mate, Mr Ross, told him that four broods of hedge sparrows wore reared in the garden last year, but the nests were in a coprosma hedge surrounding the garden, and were not on the ground. House sparrows attend as regularly as clockwork to feed with the fowls at the light station when they hear the culls. A few hedge sparrows usually join the company. The hedge sparrows do not take any grain, but they know that scraps, mostly boiled rabbits, are thrown out, and thev look for small pieces of meat, too small for the fowls to bother with.

Miss Alice Watkin, Norman’s Hill Road, Onehunga, saw and heard the shining cuckoo for the first time this season on October 2. In her garden early in the morning on October 4 she heard the long-tailed cuckoo, but failed to see i£ in the pohutukawa. tree from •which the notes came. In the autumn of this year she beard three long-tailed cuckoos together in a Norfolk Island pine in her garden. They stayed there about two hours, and left one after another. A correspondent at Mobu, fifty-four miles north-west of Gisborne, telegraphed on October 9: “ Hoard the first cuckoo of the season yesterday.” Mias Watkin reports that parrakcets are present,in the forest at the Huia, on Manuk an Harbour. Some friends of hers there have in captivity a parrakeet caught by bird lime.