JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 21. 
instance, nine years. During the entire lapse of these years the bird 
never once was known to refer to some one thing he had been taught 
until something happened with which that thing’ was especially 
associated, and then there was the most satisfactory evidence that he 
remembeted it as clearly as if the association of thought respecting 
it had been of daily occurrence. 
The power of classifying sounds and observing the difference in 
sounds is also a striking peculiarity of some talking birds. Let old 
‘* Major” be put in the other room and the door closed tight ; now 
hit your side of the door with a stone or cane or key or your own 
knuckles, and he will say, ‘Come in.” Take a small tin cup and 
hit the door with the corner of it and he will say, ‘‘ Milk,” and you 
cannot deceive him, so long as you strike loud enough for him to 
know that you have hit the door with something. 
New Zealand’s talking birds are not equal to those of Australia, 
though some birds, especially the Ka-Ka, are fair speakers. 
The most interesting ‘of them all is the owl parrott, or Ka-Ka-po. 
This bird, though possessed of strong, large wings, never uses them, 
except to steady itself in its descent from a higher to a lower limb. 
In ascending it always-creeps up, never flies. Its nest and vendes- 
vous are in the hollow, or under the roots of old, large trees. Its 
habits are almost entirely nocturnal. It is said, indeed, that the 
Ka-Ka-po.is never seen during the day. Before the use of dogs to 
drive it from its burrow, natives were accustomed to hunt it at night, 
confusing and blinding it with lights. It feeds wholly on the ground, 
glutting itself with some kinds of mosses, ferns and grass. It offers 
a formidable resistance to a dog, by means of its strong claws and 
beak. \ 
THE KEA. 
The Kea, or hawk-parrot, is, if anything, a still greater curiosity. 
In former years this bird fed entirely on nuts and fruits. Discover- 
ing a sheep’s pelt on the fence near the settler’s residence it began 
to peck at it, more apparently from curiosity than anything else, and 
at length, from this beginning, became a carnivorous bird. It 
has learned the art of attacking the living sheep, and in the higher 
altitudes where sheep feed on the mountain slopes, as many as 
15,000 a year have been destroyed by the Kea. The N. Z. govern- 
ment have found it necessary to offer 75 cents a head for their 
