524 Proceedings. 



2. ''Note on the Habits of Gei-ygonejlaviventrisy" by T. B. Gillies, M.H.R. 



On Wednesday, 7tli October instant, in passing along the road from 

 Russell (Bay of Islands) to Tikiora, in company with Dr. Hector and Professor 

 Berggren, I observed, depending from the twig of a manuka bush close to the 

 roadside, and about five feet from the ground, what appeared to be a bunch of 

 moss. On examining it I found it to be a nest of the Gerygone flaviventriSf 

 containing four eggs. The nest (which, with one of the eggs, I present here- 

 with) is of the shape of a soda-water bottle, eight inches in length, by about 

 four in diameter at its widest part. The side aperture is fully one- third way 

 down from the twig on which it hung, and measured one and a-half inches 

 across, by about one inch perpendicular. The upper portion of the nest some- 

 what overhangs the aperture^ forming a sort of hood. The nest is composed of 

 twigs, grass, cowhair, and greenish spider nests, with a white coral-like moss 

 scattered over the outside. The eggs are ten-sixteenths of an inch in length, 

 by seven-sixteenths of an inch greatest diameter, ovoid, of a faint pinkish 

 colour, with small brown spots, more numerous at the wider end of the egg. 

 How the long-tailed cuckoo {Eudynamis taitensis) can, as stated by Dr. 

 Buller,* deposit its eggs in such a nest I can scarcely understand. On 22nd 

 instant one of my children discovered, under a large Cupressiis Tnacrocarpa in 

 my garden, a specimen of the Eudynamis taitensis recently killed, apparently 

 by a hawk. It would have been impossible for the Eudynamis to have 

 entered the opening in the nest of the Gerygone, 



3. "On Forest Culture," by J. C. Firth. {Transactions, p. 181.) 

 Mr. Gillies did not agree with Mr. Firth, that for the immediate future 

 we should confine ourselves to the planting of Eucalypti and Coniferce. There 

 were many objections against the extensive planting of Eucalypti, It would 

 be scarcely necessary to do so in the north with the object of inducing 

 moisture, as the country was so narrow that it derived abundant moisture 

 from the sea. This was one of the questions which it would be better for 

 them to consider in a commercial than in a political aspect. It was one of 

 those things which could be better undertaken by the people, who understood 

 it, than by the Government, who did not. Tables had been furnished to show 

 that the country had been denuded of its forests to a great extent, and it had 

 been stated that thousands of acres had been destroyed by bushmen lighting 

 their pipes, and that saw-mill proprietors wasted tremendous quantities of 



remains in this state fifteen to twenty-two days, according to heat of place, etc. , and emerges 

 the perfect insect. The catei^jillar is very handsome — smooth skin, pale yellow ground, 

 with l^lack and purplish bands round the body, and four long black horns, tMO just 

 above the head, and two at the extremity of the tail. I have sown lots of the seed in the 

 bush of the plant that it feeds upon (I call it the scarlet cotton), so have hopes that tho 

 animal may become plentiful. 1 reared upwards of twenty from the eggs last year, and 

 let most of them go to increase and multiply." 



* Birds of Now Zealand, p. 75. 



