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the North Island ; but in the winter of 1858 it again crossed the strait, and appeared in Wel- 

 lington and its environs in greater numbers than before. During the four succeeding years it 

 regularly wintered with us, recrossing the strait on the approach of spring. Since the year 1862, 

 when it commenced to breed with us, it has been a permanent resident in the North Island, and 

 from that time it continued to advance northwards. Mr. Colenso, of Napier, reports that it was 

 first seen at Ahuriri in 1862. On his journey to Te Wairoa, in that year, he saw it at Aropaua- 

 nui, and found its nest containing four fledgelings. The natives of that place told him that it 

 was a new bird to them, they having first observed it there in the preceding year, 1861. The Hon. 

 Major Atkinson, on the occasion of a visit, as Defence Minister, to the native tribes of the Upper 

 Wanganui, in April 1864, made inquiries on the subject, and was informed by the natives that 

 the Zosterops had appeared in their district for the first time in 1863. 



As far as I can ascertain, they penetrated to Waikato in the following year, and pushed their 

 way as far as Auckland in 1865. Captain Hutton reports that in the winter of 1867 they had 

 spread all over the province, as far north as the Bay of Islands, and in 1868 he writes, — "They 

 are now in the most northerly parts of this island." That they have continued to move on still 

 further northward would appear to be the case from the following interesting notes by Mr. G. B. 

 Owen, communicated to me by Captain Hutton : — " On my passage from Tahiti to Auckland, per 

 brig ' Rita,' about 300 miles north of the North Cape of New Zealand, I saw one morning several 

 little birds flying about the ship. From their twittering and manner of flying I concluded that 

 they were land birds, and they were easily caught. They were of a brownish-grey and yellowish 

 colour, with a little white mark round the eye. I saw several pass over the ship during the day, 

 travelling northwards. I arrived in Auckland a few days afterwards, on the 20th of May, when 

 the so-called Blight-birds appeared here in such numbers, and I at once recognized them as the 

 same." Mr. Seed, the Inspector of Customs, has furnished me with the following interesting 

 particulars bearing on the same point. When on an official visit to the lighthouse on Dog Island, 

 situated about seven miles eastward of the Bluff, he was informed by the keeper that on one 

 occasion a great number of these birds had killed themselves by striking against the lighthouse, 

 either during the night or before the lights were put out in the morning, as he found them in 

 scores lying dead in the gallery. Mr. Seed coidd not ascertain positively the direction whence 

 they came, but he understood that it was from the southward ; and other inquiries at the time led 

 him to conclude that they had come from Stewart's Island, the extreme southern limit of New 

 Zealand. 



This tendency of migration northwards appears to me quite inconsistent with the idea of the 

 species having come to us from Australia. 



Now let us ascertain something of its recorded history in the South Island. Mr. Potts, a 

 most careful and experienced observer, writes to me : — " I first observed it (in Canterbury) after 

 some rough weather, July 28, 1856. I saw about half a dozen specimens on some isolated black 

 birch trees in the Rockwood valley in the Malvern Hills." In the Auckland Museum there is a 

 specimen of this bird, sent from Nelson by Mr. St. John (an industrious bird-collector) in 1856. 

 The skin was labelled " stranger," and in the letter accompanying it, Mr. St. John states that 

 these birds had made their first appearance in Nelson that winter (the same in which they crossed 

 to the North Island), and that "no one, not even the natives, had ever seen them before." 



