Wellington Philosophical Society. 639 



nest, and may therefore be classed with the cuckoos and other 

 migratory birds which visit our shores. The song is so sweet 

 and soft that it is utterly unlike that of any of the native 

 New Zealand birds ; it resembles that of the garden warbler 

 of England, which I used to hear in Surrey and Hampshire 

 every spring. 



Ptilotis chrysops, Yellow-faced Honey-eater. (" The Birds of 



Australia," Gould, vol. i., pp. 521, 522.) 



Crown of the head, back of the neck, all the upper surface, 

 wings, and tail, dark-brown with a slight tinge of olive ; throat 

 and undersurface dark greyish-brown, the latter colour pre- 

 dominating on the chest ; a fine line of black runs from the 

 nostrils through the eye ; this black line is bounded below by 

 a stripe of yellow, which runs under the eye and over the ear- 

 covert, and below this runs another parallel line of black, 

 which commences at the base of the lower mandibles and 

 exteiids beyond the line of the ear-coverts ; immediately above 

 the eye behind is a small spot of yellow, and behind the ear- 

 coverts a like spot of white ; bill blackish-brown ; irides and 

 eyelash dark-brown ; legs leaden-brown. 



Female like male, except that it is smaller. 



Very common in New South Wales. Sprightly in habit, 

 and sings sweetly. 



Entobiology. 

 With reference to entomology, a circumstance which may 

 be of some interest to entomologists was observed by me in 

 November, 1889, when I was at Limestone Island, in Wha- 

 ngarei Harbour. We had just made a large shallow tank of 

 concrete on the beach above high-water mark to hold con- 

 denser-pipes for the steam-engine which worked a lime- and 

 cement-mill. The tank was to be filled with sea-water, but 

 the pump and pipes had not yet been fitted. Heavy rain 

 occurred in the night, and, when I went to look at the tank 

 in the morning, I found it nearly full of rain-water, partly 

 from direct rainfall, partly from the drip from an adjoining 

 roof of the works ; but what surprised me was to observe 

 a large number of swimming-beetles in the water. Whether 

 these beetles were Colymbetes rufimanus or Corixa zealandica 

 I am unable to say ; but I think they must have been the 

 former from their size and colour, and because they seemed 

 identical with the swimming-beetles which were familiar to 

 me from my early recollections of these insects in the Old 

 Country. How they could have got into the tank was a 

 mystery to me ; and I supposed they must have been 

 caught up by a whirlwind or waterspout and carried from the 

 mainland aiid dropped into the tank. I had read of fish 

 havmg been thus transported on some occasions. Lately I 



