96 MUTTON BIRDS 



fallen rimu. These lodges we were unable to 

 explore, but probing with a stick revealed a 

 length of seven or eight feet, with side passages 

 and ramifications. In each we could feel a bird 

 with our long supple-jack, and hear him moving 

 when disturbed, rumbling like a subterranean 

 rabbit. 



During the weeks spent in this forest I had 

 mentally backed myself against Banjo — my 

 height and sight against his nose — and although 

 he ran on a rope he could at will, either, as the 

 Collect puts it, ''prevent or follow me." Of the 

 four test matches thus played — the two breeding 

 burrows with males sitting and the two lodges 

 containing birds, — I won the first, in an innings 

 wdth many wickets to spare. The second was 

 an equally easy victory for Banjo, ten holes up 

 and eight to pla}''. The third — the sand bank 

 lodge— was just won by me. Honour bright. I 

 believe I sighted the trail the sooner by an 

 infinitesimal space. This time I retained the 

 rope, but we slid down the bank together in all 

 the eagerness of a hurried touch-down. The 

 fourth match — the rimu lodge — I also won, 

 thus in covert proving the huge advantage given 

 by height and the ability to look downward and 

 forward, and suggesting the reason why birds 

 have come to rely so little on the sense of smell, 

 so greatly on that of sight. 



I believe that during day-time the Stewart 

 Island Kiwi not infrequently moves abroad, or 

 at any rate lies out in covert; and, speaking 

 generally, that the bird is less strictly nocturnal 

 in its habits than, according to observei's, are 

 other bi'eeds of A^itteryx. 



These southern forests, it must be re- 



