OOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND. 223 
one nesting-place. From a hillside west of the Acheron River, 
a tributary of the Rakaia, an eyry furnished eggs of which the 
lower part of one disclosed some patches of creamy white much 
sprinkled with yellowish-brown, but over the larger portion of 
the surface the ground colour was either yellowish-brown or it 
was covered with that colour splashed with irregularly shaped 
marks of dark brown; on another egg from the same eyry the 
creamy ground colour was so much hidden by rich yellowish- 
brown as to appear in a few irregular marks only. From a 
craggy spur on Mount Potts, Upper Rangitata, an egg before 
me has the smaller end white, dotted with small freckles of 
reddish-brown ; these gradually become larger till at the bilge 
and just above it there is a broad zone of a dark reddish-brown 
with the apex white, freely sprinkled with reddish-brown. A 
fellow egg has a pinkish ground on which, from the smaller end 
over two-thirds of the surface, are innumerable small reddish- 
- brown marks, the upper end being clouded over with rich brown 
and some few blackish-brown splashes. Another specimen from 
Mount Harper range has almost the entire surface white, freckled 
with yellowish-brown, chiefly in small dots, except at the apex, 
where there is an irregular splash of dark yellowish-brown ; this 
egg is usually pointed at the smaller end. From a rocky height 
above the gorges of the Ashburton River I have an elongated 
ege of dull pinky tone, much freckled with yellowish-brown, with 
a cap-like blotch at the apex of darker shades of brown. 
There is but little variation in size, as on comparing a series 
collected from many habitats the average dimensions may be 
‘given as two inches in length with a breadth of one inch six 
lines. The elongated specimen above mentioned as obtained 
from above the Ashburton gorges has a length of two inches 
three lines. 
Lao ferox, Peale: 
Sparrow-hawk, Karewa-rewa-tara—The dashing little Spar- 
row-hawk has received but scant justice from many ornitholo- 
gists, some of whom profess not to believe in it, and would 
remove its name from the list of the native fauna; but one 
is bound to admit that its opponents, however high their stand- 
ing as ornithologists, are usually found amongst those who 
have not had the advantage of knowing the bird and its life in 
the freedom of its wild haunts; they reach their conclusions from 
the comparison of many dried skins, and possibly also from the 
contemplation of that ghastly sham—the stuffed bird. 
The Sparrow-hawk suffers from the same causes which affect 
its congener; the march of settlement drives it back to the 
mountain ranges and hill country, where small woods are inter- 
spersed amongst the ravines and deep gullies. I have found it 
breeding not very far from the glacier on the Lawrence, Upper 
Rangitata. Its courage only ceases with life. In earlier days 
when station huts were very rare on “The Plains,” and licensed 
houses afforded miserably scant accommodation to the jaded 
