390 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1924 



ment is his well-developed powers of mimicry. This additional at- 

 tainment was especially insisted upon by an Australian ornithologist, 

 guest of the British Ornithologists' Club, when I was in London 

 last summer. He claimed that the male Menura is unequaled in 

 this respect; and we know that many other observers have recorded 

 instances of this curious trait. One gentleman had a lyre bird as 

 a pet around his farm in Australia for a great many years. " There 

 was nothing he could not imitate. The following are a few of his 

 mimicries: The noise of a horse and dray moving slowly, with 

 the play of the wheels in the axle boxes, chains rattling, etc.; an 

 occasional ' Gee up, Bess ' ; the sound of a violin, piano, cornet, cross- 

 cut saw, and so on. All the more frequent noises heard about the 

 farm the bird learned to perfection, such as a pig being killed, a dog 

 howling, child crying, cries of a flock of parrots, jackass laughing, 

 and many calls of small birds." 



It was a rare privilege for me to see in company with Doctor 

 Le Souef, director of the Sydney Zoo, and a number of other dis- 

 tinguished ornithologists, three of these remarkable birds in the Na- 

 tional Park, exhibiting the best of their mimetic and other stunts. 

 You can imagine how lucky I was when Gould relates that he was 

 a year in Australia without seeing one, although he heard many. 



I never see the name Norfolk Island (past Avhich we sailed) with- 

 out recalling the image of a transplanted, but perfect example of its 

 so-called pine — the beautiful Araucaria excelsa — GO feet high, deli- 

 cate green, and straight as a die, that one may at any time see near 

 the Hotel del Coronado. This symmetrical beauty performs the use- 

 ful function each holiday season of a live, outdoor Christmas tree. 

 Bedight with colored electric lights from its spreading base to its 

 conical top, it is easily the observed of all observers, and both day 

 and night is a most attractive object. As if further to fit the pur- 

 pose for which it is borrowed, the extreme apex of the tree termi- 

 nates in a sort of Maltese cross, and forms a convenient and appro- 

 priate anchorage for the traditional Star of Bethlehem. It was 

 Captain Cook who discovered and christened the island — after the 

 ducal family of the same name. He says of the tree: "The chief 

 produce is a sort of spruce pine, which grows in abundance and to a 

 great size, many of the trees being as thick, breast high, as two men 

 could fathom, and exceeding straight and tall. It resembles the 

 Quebec pine " — and we must not forget that for several years the 

 captain cultivated the acquaintance of Lower Canadian timber. 



There is, or rather was, a beautiful Norfolk Island parrot {Nestor 

 norfolcensis) of which only one bird skin remains, and a single draw- 

 ing to perpetuate its memory. Thus vanishing is many another 

 species and race of Polynesian fauna. 



