GENERAL NOTES. 83 
ture ege in it, and another great eggshell I saw that had been 
hatched, which put me in hopes of a takahi, but it was only a big 
kiwi’s. It has a peculiar beak, its upper mandible would make a 
crotchet needle or a bodkin, the nostril being as near the end as 
the eye ofa needle. I think it must hunt its grubs and wire- 
worms by scent, for it is a poor scratcher, if it scratches at all ; 
and for it to find its food by sight in the dark among the ac- 
cumulation of rubbish where it lives, would be like finding the 
needle in the bundle of straw. 
“ The shags have a breeding place of about 30 nests half way 
between Te Anau and Manapouri ; and you will be glad to hear 
that I visited them this season. So artfully, however, had they 
chosen a siteon leaning trees over a rapid that I got very few heads 
(9), but I upset some of their nests, and wasted some powder and 
shot on the others. One big young fellow attracted my attention 
by its incessant crying for food. I thought, “That one must be 
starving, it is only a charity to shoot it,’ when, behold! it was 
full to the eyes of half-digested eel. I find nothing but eel in the 
black shags, while the two smaller shags seem to devote them- 
selves entirely to a sort of little flathead. [I have examined them 
carefully in hopes of finding trout or other fish, but there were 
none. It is a good plan to advertise for their heads, for it causes 
the death of scores that will not have to be paid for, for people 
cannot get enough to make it worth while sending them. I caught 
just one upukerora a year ago at night in Home Creek witha 
worm fora bait. It was about a footlong. I tried to eat it, but 
it was not much chop. I have seen nothing of them since, nor 
have I seen any trout in the Waiau or the Lakes, though there are 
plenty at Linwood, in Kakapo Creek, that could get into the 
lakes if they wished. 
“All round the south end of Te Anau there are traces of old 
Maori ovens, and in one place near the mouth of the Upukerora 
tiver there has been a pah of maybe a dozen wharés, some of the 
totara woodwork yet remaining ; I hear some of the wharés were 
standing 25 years ago, but it must have been long since they 
were built, for the holes in the wood were evidently mortised with 
stone chisels. Scraps of moa bone are quite common, and in 
two places I have seen charred moa bone in the cinder heaps. 
But what attracted the later Maoris to this place must have 
been the abundance of eels. I think they cultivated potatoes, 
for I found along pipi shell from the sea which they use for 
scraping potatoes, also pawa shells, and scraps of iron, showing 
they were in communiction with the whalers. 
“There are rabbits on all the mountain tops between Mana- 
pouri and Te Anau, and through the bush .as far as the end of 
the south fiord in Te Anau. They are doing much harm by 
exterminating shrubs that cattle could have lived upon. It is 
supposed that rabbits were put across the Waiau purposely 
by rabbiters, but I do not think it. I saw a rabbit one evening 
swim the Mataura where it was 60 yards wide, and it came from 
the other side towards me, until it saw me, when it pricked up 
