118 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Ocydromus greyi, Buller. (North Island Woodhen.) 



This species of Woodhen is still numerous on the wooded 

 hill - sides and mountain gullies in the Murimotu - Taupo 

 country. It is seldom met with in the open country, except 

 at one particular season, when the birds are exceedingly fat, 

 and the natives catch large numbers by running them down 

 with dogs. 



It is a very remarkable fact in local botany that on the 

 arid lands forming the Onetapu Desert, and on the slopes of 

 Euapehu Mountain, where the climate is very rigorous, cer- 

 tain native pines, which in the lowlands attain to a consider- 

 able height as forest trees, are represented by dwarfed forms 

 of the same species, not more than a few inches in height, 

 and often assuming a creeping habit. These degraded forms, 

 which are specifically identical with their forest relations, 

 resemble them exactly in their fructification. The berries 

 borne by these pigmy growths equal in size, and sometimes 

 even exceed, those of the forest trees, — the fruit of the dwarf 

 totara, for example, being sometimes double the size of the 

 normal berry, while those of the miro, kahikatea, and rimu 

 are at least fully equal to the berries produced by the forest 

 trees. When these miniature woods are laden with ripe mast 

 the Woodhen leaves the shelter of the woods and comes out 

 into the open to revel in plenty. As already stated, the birds 

 then become unusually fat, and, owing to their diminished 

 activity, become an easy prey to the natives. Captain Mair 

 informs me that he has known of a native witli a good dog, 

 ten years ago, killing as many as eighty in a single day. 

 Pigeons and kakas, also, are said to resort to these subalpine 

 woods in considerable numbers to feed on the ripe fruit. 

 When camped on the edge of a red-birch forest near the 

 Mangataramea Stream (at an elevation of 3,000ft.) I heard 

 the loud cry of the Woodhen every night, but I never met 

 with the bird in the open country, and the sheep-farmer with 

 whom I was staying appeared never to have seen one. 



I was much struck with the beauty of these clumps of 

 bush in the Murimotu highlands, where the Woodhen was so 

 numerous. Some of them consist entirely of kawaka (Libro- 

 cedrus douiana) a very ornamental tree of bright-green foliage 

 and tapering growth, with a trunk like a miniature Sequoia. 

 This is plainly seen when a fire has passed through the forest 

 and left the trees dead and naked. In some places you meet 

 with the strange sight of the whole forest apparently hewn 

 down, and strewing the ground with bleached and charred 

 trunks. The explanation is this : that these trees are gene- 

 rally hollow near the ground, and have only a feeble support 

 of lateral roots. Consequently, when afire has passed through 



