102 
NATURE NOTES. 
Time after time heavy dark lowering clouds roll up from east 
and west and south, only to threaten and disappear, leaving the 
drought strengthened and harder set than ever. Sometimes, 
though less frequently, the hills are wrapped for a few hours in 
fog, ending oftenest in intense heat. 
As the grass becomes brown, and the sheep tracks work up 
into holes here and there of powdered dust, appear plagues of 
fleas, or “ little strangers,” as the Maoris elegantly call them. 
The summer, too, grows musical with the black crickets’ night 
cry. These crickets are supposed to have come over either 
from Fiji in fruit cases, or else with the regiments sent across 
from India in the days of our native difflculty. Mr. Colenso tells 
me he believes the former the more probable. 
In the gaping fissures of the heavy alluvial flats they swarm 
in millions, scuttling off for safety at the sound of a footstep, or 
pouring like water into the yawning gaps. They crop the grass 
to the very ground, and nibble besides many kinds of fruit- 
bark, leaving the trees skimmed as if snow-starved rabbits had 
been at work. They will eat also coats, boots, and wall paper. 
They, with small grasshoppers, cicadas and great clumsy locusts, 
provide an ample feast for the wild birds, and ducks, fowls and 
turkeys can hardly move, so crammed are their bursting crops. 
On the hill-tops, too, the flying ants make the shepherds’ lives 
a burden to them. 
Round the whole horizon enormous high towering pure white 
clouds rolled in eddying convolution rise into the calm air, and 
day after day these appear and re-appear. Sometimes sultry 
nor’-westers steal in heat over the quivering fields, the air 
becomes heavy with smoke, and the sunlight red and weird. 
The panting sheep draw together on the open plains, and in 
circles seek each other’s shade, their lowered heads in the centre 
of every ring. The stamping cattle stand or lie in the karaka’s 
sombre shade, or whisk off the troublesome flies in the deepest 
bush. 
Oftener, however, in westerly weather on the sky line a few 
thin blown clouds appear, sharp shaped like jagged peninsulas 
of thawing ice, or backed and curved like snowdrifts lingering 
late in spring. Later, in intermittent gusts, the gale breaks. 
The birds retire to more sheltered spots, and the sheep to the 
lee of rocks and scrub. The warm fierce stream of wind floats 
the willow’s weeping droopers parallel to the earth, or shakes 
and flaps the long streamers like flags, blackening the leaves 
and withering the fresh silky tips. The garden blossoms 
become flaccid and limp, and the tender tendrils of the bush 
vines droop. From every road and river bed the dust blows 
like a forest fire. 
More rarely in a nor’-westerly gale the clouds are shaped like 
great twisted l)akers’ rolls, and follow each other pretty regularly 
across the sky. With such clouds in the air the gale usually 
ends in a smart shower, the first great drops hissing on the 
