BuLLER. — On New Zealand Ornithology . 331 



have visited their ordinary haunts have remarked on the 

 extraordinary scarcity of their bones and other remains. 

 When old and worn out tliey apparently seek out the recesses 

 of the forest and retire there to die." He quotes an interest- 

 ing passage from Sir Emerson Tennent's work on Ceylon, as 

 follows: "Frequenters of the forest with whom I have con- 

 versed, vfhether Europeans or Singhalese, are consistent in 

 their assurances that they have never found the remains of 

 an elephant which had died a natural death. ... A 

 European gentleman, who for thirty-six years without inter- 

 mission has been living in the jungle, ascending to tne summit 

 of mountains in the prosecution of the trigonometrical sur- 

 vey, and penetrating valleys in tracing roads and opening 

 means of communication — one, too, who has made the habits 

 of the wild elephant a subject of constant observation and 

 study— has often expressed to me his astonishment that, after 

 seeing many thousands of living elephants in all possible situa- 

 tions, he had never yet found a single skeleton of a dead one, 

 except those which had fallen by the rifle." 



The following touching account is given by Thomas 

 Edward, the Scotch naturalist, of the finding of a dead wild 

 duck, on crossing the Clashmauch : " As I imagined she was 

 skulking with a view to avoid observation, I touched her with 

 my stick in order that she might rise ; but she rose not. I 

 was surprised, and, on a nearer inspection, I found that she was 

 dead. She lay raised a little on one side, her neck stretched 

 out, her mouth open and full of snow, her wings somewhat 

 extended, and with one of her legs appearing a little behind 

 her. Near to it there were two eggs. On my discovering 

 this I lifted up the bird, and underneath her was a nest con- 

 taining eleven eggs ; these, with the other two, made thirteen 

 in all : a few of them were broken. I examined the whole of 

 them and found them, without exception, to contain young 

 birds. This was an undoubted proof that the poor mother had 

 sat upon them from two to three w^eeks. With her dead body 

 in my hand I sat down to investigate the matter, and to 

 ascertain, if I could, the cause of her death. I examined her 

 minutely all over, and could find neither wound nor any mark 

 whatever of violence. She had every appearance of having died 

 of suffocation. Although I had only circumstantial evidence, I 

 had no hesitation in arriving at the conclusion that she had 

 come by her death in a desperate but faithful struggle to pro- 

 tect her eggs from the fatal effects of the recent snow-storm. 

 I could not help thinking, as I looked at her, how deep and 

 striking an example she afforded of maternal affection. The 

 ruthless blast had swept, with all its fury, along the lonesome 

 and unsheltered hill. The snow had risen higher, and the 

 smothering drift came fiercer as the night drew on ; yet still 



