180



Correspondence.



dogs of the country are big and fierce like wolves, six of them assaulted us this

afternoon and put our ponies to flight !


Dec. 2nd, 1915. It has been infernally cold the last week, snow and

blizzards, so we abode in our tents most of the time. The snipe flock round as

tame as sparrows within fifty yards of the camp. There are also geese and

ducks about, a few quail, hares, partridges and pigeons, but we have no gun.

There are lots of kites, hawks, etc. about, but I cannot kill them or would send

you a skin of each sort. I hunted ,a sea eagle one day.


Dec. 26th, 1915. I caught a small horned viper yesterday and a harmless

snake, and we killed by accident a noble marmot, like an enormous mole, twice

the size of an ordinary mole, with rodent’s teeth and a square face and no tail.

If I can get another I shall take his skin, but this one had a pick-axe through

him and was too smashed up. I will try to get you one of the grey hawks as

there are now two guns in the battalion.


Feb. 6th, 1916. I have dug a few swamp pits in my trenches, 2ft. deep

and 3ft long, with quartering over the top for drainage, and nearly every morn¬

ing I find three or four green tree frogs and two or three fat, short-tailed field

mice in them, so I have to take up the boards and fish them out. The mice are

very pleasant, fat and round with round faces, nearly black ; they don’t bite

when caught, but sit up and wash their faces on your hand, being rather slow

of movement. There are several little owls about and very noisy, but I have

not discovered their lair. I shall search one Sunday and see if I can catch one

in a hole as they are usually in one rocky bit of the hill just behind my tent.



A WONDERFUL FIND.


[We insert this account from a New Zealand paper, the truth of which

we cannot vouch for].


A remarkable discovery of bird life was made by Mr. R. E. Clouston,

mining engineer, of Rockville, in the Collingwood (Nelson) district recently.

Mr. Clouston knows a great deal about the bird-life of New Zealand, and it fell

to his lot whilst exploring the hinterland of his district in a wild country (of

poor land), known as the Gouland Downs, some twenty-six miles from Rock¬

ville, to discover an entire colony of birds of the species that are becoming

admittedly rare, and in some cases were believed to be extinct, lie could

hardly believe his senses on coming into contact with a rookery of the great

kiwi (Apteryx haasti), not a few stray families, but thousands of them, sporting

and grubbing about in the patches of tussock land which alternated with clumps

of virgin bush. And not only kiwis (big mottled fellows) but thousands of

kakapos (the night parrot, so rare that an advertisement appeared in an Auck¬

land paper a few months ago offering £80 for a pair of them).


Mr. Clouston arrived here on Thursday morning with twenty-five of the

big kiwis, and the excitement created on the wharf was something to be re¬

membered.



