CHILDREN’S CORRESPONDENCE COLUMN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XVI, 16 April 1898, Page 495

CHILDREN’S CORRESPONDENCE COLUMN.

Any boy or girl who like* to become a cousin can do so. and write letters to ‘Cousin Kate, care of the Lady Editor. ‘Graphic Office. Auckland. Write on one side of the paper only. All purely correspondence letters with enelopeends turned in are carried through the Post Office as follows: —Not exceeding |oz. Id: not exceeding 4oz, Id ; for every additional 2oz or fractional part thereof, Jd. It is well for correspondence to be marked ‘ Press Manuscript only.* Please note, dear cousins, that all letters addressed to Cousin Kate roust now bear the words ‘ Press Manuscript only. If so marked, and the flap turned in. and not overweight, they will come fora Id stamp in Auckland, but a Id from every other place. THE GR.PHIC’ COUSINS' COT FUND. This fund is for the purpose of maintain ing a j>oor, sick child in the Auckland Hospital, and is contributed to by the * Graphic’ cousins—readers of the children's page. The cot has been already bought by their kind collection of money, ami now £25 a year is needed to pay for the nursing, food and medical attendance of the child in it. Any contributions will be gladly received by Cousin Kate, care of the Lady Editor, ‘New Zealand Graphic,' Short land street, or collecting cards will be sent on application. GENERAL CUCKOO. Many hard-worked individuals in other lands than Russia will appreciate the longing for liberty which attends the coming of spring. In England when we hear the calling of the cuckoo we long to ‘run away,’ but whatever the musical summons it is not to be denied. Hundreds of convicts at the mines in Kara, says George Kennan in * Siberia and the Exile System,’ escape in the summer, and live a wandering life in the forest. The signal for the annual movement is given by the cuckoo, whose notes announce the beginning of the warm season. The cry of the bird is taken as evidence that an escaped convict can once more live in the forest, and to run away is, in convict slang, to *go to General Kukushka for orders,’ Kukushka being the Russian name for the cuckoo. With many convicts the love of wandering through the trackless forests and over the great plains of Eastern Siberia becomes a positive mania. They do not expect to escape altogether ; they know that for months they will live as hunted fugitives, subsist on berries and roots, sleep on the water-soaked ground, endure hardships innumerable, and face death at every step : but in spite of all this, they cannot hear the first soft notes of the cuckoo without feeling a passionate longing for the a>lventures that attend the life of a brodyag—a vagrant or tramp. ‘ I had once a convict servant,’ said a prison official at Kara, ‘ who was one of these irreclaimable vagrants, and who ran away periodically for the mere pleasure of living a nomadic life. He always suffered terrible hardships; he had no hope of escaping from Siberia, and he was invariably brought liack in fetters, and severely punished. Still, nothing could break him of the practice. • Finally, after he hail become old ami grayheaded, he came to me one morning in early summer ami said, " Barin’, I wish you would please have me locked up.” “ Locked up ?’ said I. “What for? What have you been doing J” • “ I have not been doing anything,” said he, ‘ but you know 1 am a brodyag. I have run away many times, and if I am not locked up I shall run away again. lam old and gray now. I can’t stand the life in the woods, and I don’t want to run away ; but if i hear General Kukushka calling me, I must go Please do me the favour to lock me up, your High Nobility, so that I can’t go. ” • He was locked up, ami kept in prison most of the summer. When he was released the fever of unrest hail left him, and he was quiet, docile and contented.’

VI’LTL’RES. There are no songbirds in the tropics which rival the songsters of tem|>erate regions. When our best singers go into tl.e tropics for the winter they eitlier become silent or take up an unmusical note. Writing of Guiana. Mr Everard F. ini Thum remarks that ‘ the ugly birds are much more numerous than the beautiful,’ and then he goes on to tell how he made the acquaintance of some of the more useful, if more hideous, ones. Very early one morning I had taken my gun and wandered into the forest, and having, aliout dawn, reached a clearing, evidently made by tire, which seemed likely to lie visited by hints, I sat down on a fallen tree near the centre to wait. For some fifty yards on every side of me there wa« a dreary waste of’ fallen and half-bnrned trees, some blackened, others whitened, by exposure to the weather. The soil was covered with ash, and only a rank herb grew here and there. At the outskirts of the clearing some trees, burned and dead, yet stood erect ; a little farther off the trees were only scorched, and lieyond that again was the dense, living forest. Not a sound was yet heard. As the sun rose the little field of white in which I sat literally glowed with light and heat. Presently, almost at my feet, something moved, ami then a black vulture rose slowly from the ground, leaving two eggs exposed, and flew to one of the dead standing trees. While I watched this bird there was a slight sound liebind me, and, turning, 1 saw another vulture standing on a burned tree on the other side of me. Once more, and again ami again this hap]>eiied Surprised at the presence of these living things wliereall had seemed to me strangely lifeless, I began to count the birds. I had to count quicker and quicker, for every moment a new vulture woke and attracted my attention by stretching its wings to dry them in the morning sun, in which position it remained awhile motionless. The only sound was the slight rustle caused by this wing-stretching. At length I found myself the centre of a circle of 37 vultures,each with outstretched wings, standing motionless on a gaunt, tire-blackened, sun-whitened tree, and all gazing curiously at me. At last, to break the spell, I fired into the air, and the birds rose ami began their task of soaring high up in the heavens. I found, afterward, that this was a favourite roosting-place. Every evening the birds colleeteu near the place, and for some time, instead of flying high and steadily as they do through the day, rushed frantically about overhead. Just Irefore dark they settled down in the clearing which I have described. Not only at early morning, to dry the dew, but also after a shower, vultures stand with out-stretched wings, sometimes motionless, sometimes alternately closing each wing. The negroes say that when these ‘ crows’ collect on a tree during rain, it is to consult about building a house for shelter ; but when the rain leaves ofl’, then they stretch out one wing and then the other, and they cry in chorus, as one wing goes out, * We want no house,' and as the other goes out, in turn, ‘We want no hall,’ and so on until all their feathers are dry.