FIJI-NEW ZEALAND EXPEDITION 255 
ful landscape gardens, offered opportunity for ornithological ob- 
servation and we often went there to take advantage of the warm 
sunshine and to see the birds. 
At one side of the park is a large cement building which houses 
the excellent library, with reading rooms, lending and childrens’ 
departments making available its more than 50,000 volumes. The 
building is inadequately warmed, a single small electric heater 
affording the warmth for the large reading room; many of the 
patrons were sitting in their great-coats. 
One wing of this building is given over to a display of paintings 
in oil and water-colors, as well as of documents and articles which 
have historic interest and value so far as New Zealand is con- 
eerned. An unusually fine collection of oil paintings depicting 
Maori life and famous Maoris is exhibited. One in particular, 
shows the departure of six outrigger sailing canoes from Raro- 
tonga; another of the series shows a sick and half-starved member 
of this band of bold sailors sighting the shores of New Zealand 
from one of the canoes, thus conveying the impression to the ob- 
server that the Maoris originally came from Rarotonga. 
In the vicinity of Auckland are numerous small voleanic islands 
on some of which ancient craters, though long since inactive, re- 
main more or less extant. On July 13, through the courtesy of 
the Auckland Harbor Board and as guests of the city engineer, 
Mr. Povey, some of the members of our party enjoyed a launch 
trip to one of these craters, Mt. Rangitoto, about twelve miles from 
the city. The island mountain is over 900 feet high. Volcanic 
scoria is everywhere, old lava flows crumpled and twisted and 
thrown about make walking difficult. The vegetation is sparse, 
hard and stunted and of a xerophytie nature; it is but slightly 
rooted in the small amount of loose soil on the surface and be- 
tween the lava blocks. Pohutukawas flourish better than any other 
tree. Neither birds nor insects are plentiful. Of the former only 
a few white-eyes and fantails greeted us. Opossums, rabbits and 
wallabies have been introduced from Australia and appear to 
thrive. At the side of the trail I came sufficiently close to one of 
these wallabies (Petrogale penicillata) to secure a photograph at 
fifteen feet. 
At the summit of the crater, a magnificent view of Auckland, 
Auckland Harbor, Hauraki Gulf and the island of Moto Tapu was 
displayed before us. The old crater itself, two hundred feet deep, 
with precipitous, bracken-covered sides and a very symmetrical 
