Vol. VIII." 



1909 _ 



From Magazines, &-c. 227 



" Fifty-three years ago a little olive, grey, and yellow bird, with 

 white ' spectacles,' which is now quite common in New Zealand, 

 was unknown to either Europeans or Moaris. In the winter of 

 1856 the lighthouse-keeper on Dog Island, in Foveaux Strait, 

 which separates Stewart Island from the South Island of New 

 Zealand, found one morning in the gallery of the lighthouse 

 towers scores of these birds lying dead, They had arrived in 

 the night, or early in the morning before the lights were 

 extinguished, and had dashed against the lantern. They had 

 come from Australia, and, flying day and night without finding a 

 resting place, had crossed 1,000 miles of ocean before sighting 

 New Zealand's shores. Members of the flock that survived the 

 dangers of the voyage settled in the southern part of New 

 Zealand, and ever since have occupied an honourable place in 

 New Zealand's avifauna. For several years these little birds 

 remained in the southern district of the Dominion, but gradually 

 spread towards the north, until they were to be found in all 

 parts of the South Island. Although they had involuntarily 

 crossed 1,000 miles of water in the Tasman Sea, they hesitated 

 before crossing 20 or 30 miles of water in Cook Strait, 

 which separates the South Island from the North. At first they 

 crossed in small numbers, again retired to the south, and 

 eventually advanced in force. Their arrival was recorded simul- 

 taneously by a Maori mailman at Waikanae, a small coastal 

 village in Wellington province, and by Sir Walter Buller, author 

 of ' A History of the Birds of New Zealand,' in Wellington city. 

 They flocked through the northern provinces to Wanganui, 

 Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Poverty Bay, and Auckland, making 

 friends with the native resident birds, and also with those which 

 had been imported from England, wandering to the remotest 

 outskirts of the Dominion in the Chatham, Auckland, the Snares, 

 and Campbell Islands. New Zealanders have given this little 

 bird a number of popular names. It is the ' White-eye,' ' Silver- 

 eye,' ' Ring-eye,' ' Wax-eye,' the ' Blight-Bird,' and the ' Winter 

 Migrant.' The Maoris call it ' Tau-hou,' which means 'stranger,' 

 and scientists know it in New Zealand, as well as in Australia, 

 as Zosterops {i.e., girdle-eye) ccerulescens. The genus Zosterops 

 ranges over a large part of the world, commencing in Africa 

 south of the Sahara, and extending to Madagascar, the Indian 

 Peninsula, Ceylon, the Burmese countries, the whole of China, 

 Japan, Formosa, the Malayan Peninsula and islands. New 

 Guinea, the islands of the Pacific, and Australia and New 

 Zealand. There are no fewer than eighty-five species in the 

 genus, and one of these {avrulescens) is the species which belongs 

 to Australia, and which, following a remarkable and mysterious 

 impulse, has settled in New Zealand. When New Zealand 

 colonists in the ' early days,' as they like to call them, decided 

 the question whether the ' White-eye ' was indigenous or a 



