NOTES AND QUERIES. 387 



shifting their quarters frequently. Early are they astir: their peculiar 

 whistle or call may be heard soon after daybreak lights up the forest, when 

 their food-search begins. Their notes are more often sounded in dull or 

 foggy weather, when mists settle on the leafy tops, and the broad trees — 

 clad with mosses and drooping parasites — are dropping glistening beads of 

 moisture ; the sweet note of the Huia is then frequently heard. To those 

 not familiar with the aspect of New Zealand forests it may be told that the 

 lofty trees are clad with mosses, with tangled network of delicate filmy 

 ferns that hang translucent — an evergreen fringe that overlaps the rough 

 bark of the great stems that tower aloft. Beneath this covering lies the 

 Huia's food; both sexes may be noticed, using their strong white bills to 

 tear away mosses or ferns in order to extract the larva or grub of one of 

 the large Longicorn beetles [Prionoplus reticularis). This insect is well 

 distributed from the interior to the coast; in summer time it hums its 

 sonorous drone just about dusk. The larva is found very plentifully in 

 the decaying wood ; the industrious birds strip away ferns or tear rotten 

 wood in order to get at the sluggish insect ; the stiff shafts of the tail-feathers 

 aid them in their work by being pressed closely against the bole or branch. 

 The breeding season is late spring or early summer, as I have notes of two 

 nests in the month of November. Huias being often noticed about an 

 ancient hinau tree [Olmocarpus dentatiis) that stood about two miles from 

 the banks of the Manawatu river, the nest before me was discovered. 

 There was a large hole about fifty-four inches long by eighteen inches wide 

 at eighteen feet from the ground, not far above a large limb. The nest 

 was placed a little below the mouth of this cavity, about sixteen feet six 

 inches from the ground : the diameter of the tree was four feet. It is a 

 large structure, rather loosely yet symmetrically built, the foundation of 

 coarse grasses and the bases of dead grass-leaves, closely plied and twisted 

 together; on these the walls are raised, of dead sprays and bits of coarse 

 herbaceous plants, twined into a basin-like form ; the inside lined with 

 long chips of coarse yet soft grasses ; the whole measuring, outside the 

 walls, thirteen inches in diameter, with a cavity of six inches and a half in 

 width, the depth not exceeding four inches. On November 18th it con- 

 tained one young bird that appeared about a week old ; this was carefully 

 fed on the larvae of the beetle before mentioned, and is still alive. The 

 nest material had been collected from the ground. In November, 1881, 

 a nest was discovered in the same neighbourhood which contained three 

 young birds. — T. H. Potts (Ohinitahi, February 6, 1884). 



Tit's Nest in a Railway Carriage.— The following paragraph is from 

 the ' Sufiolk Chronicle' of May 31st :— " Mr. Wm. Briggs, the engine-driver 

 on the Clactou-on-Sea branch, forwards an account of an ornithological 

 incident of some interest. In one of the buffer-plungers of a carriage 

 which is running on that line a pair of Tomtits have built a nest. The 



