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not fifty feet from the reverend pastor’s study windows. And they would doubtless have continued 
to breed in this quiet retreat had not one of the Maori school-boys, anxious to try his fowling-piece 
and wholly unmindful of the consequences, shot both birds during the breeding-season, leaving a 
pair of callow young to perish miserably in their nest. 
Some colonists are of opinion that this fine Pigeon is less plentiful than it was formerly ; but I 
do not think there is much fear of its becoming extinct so long as the native forests remain. 
Its relative abundance may be inferred from the fact that in July and August 1882, Rawiri 
Kahia and his people snared no less than eight thousand of them in a single strip of miro bush, 
about two miles in extent by half a mile in width, at Opawa, near Lake Taupo. The birds thus 
snared are preserved in their own fat and potted as “ huahua kereru.” Food of this kind is esteemed 
a great delicacy and elaborately carved kumetes are sometimes used for serving it at the tribal feasts. 
Notwithstanding its uncertain seasonal movements, there is perhaps no bird so characteristic of 
the native woods, for, at one time or another, it is met with everywhere. But there are certain 
tracks of forest which the Pigeon specially affects, the preference being of course due to the predo- 
minance of particular fruit-bearing trees. One of these favourite districts is the extensive forest 
track known as the “ Forty-mile Bush,” lying between the townships of Masterton and Woodville, 
and extending thence eastward towards Napier under the name of the “ Seventy-mile Bush.” A good 
macadamized road passes through this bush-land, a great portion of which is perfectly level ; and 
perhaps in no part of New Zealand can the transcendent beauty of the native woods be seen to 
greater advantage. Coming from the Wairarapa side, you first of all pass through some magnificent 
clumps of rimu, many hundreds of acres in extent, with just a sufficient admixture of kahikatea and 
rata to set off the peculiar softness of the former, with its “fountain of foliage ” and its uniform tint 
of yellowish green, the young trees gracefully drooping their tasselled branchlets of still paler green. 
Then, fringing the road on the upper or hill-side, for miles together are glorious beds of Lomaria 
; procera , their fronds from three to five feet long, on gracefully pendent stalks, and so closely set 
that a whole regiment of soldiers might lie in ambush there ; then a sudden turn in the road brings 
you into dense bush again, with its ever-varying shades of green and yellow and brown, blended 
together in one picturesque and harmonious whole. The tree-fern with its spreading crown is always 
present — the shapely form of Cyathea dealbata with its large umbrella top, the taller Cyathea medul- 
laris rearing its head some forty feet or more, and Dicksonia antarctica on its massive stem hung 
round with a brown garment of withered fronds — the lofty dark green rewarewa and brighter kohekohe 
mingle with the titoki and miro, and the tawa with its light green foliage stands out in bold relief 
against a dark background of kahikatea trees standing close together. Then you come upon an old 
Maori clearing abutting on the road, presenting a tangle of new-grown shrubs and saplings, close and 
compact, and all of the freshest green ; and from the very midst of this there rises, like a silent 
monitor with its bleached arms pointing heavenward, a former monarch of the forest, long since dead 
and withered and now decaying slowly under the crumbling hand of time, but bearing on its lower 
forks huge bunches of green Astelia, and quite hidden at its base by a luxuriant growth of under- 
wood. In the more recent openings in the bush the trunks of the trees may be seen laden with 
tons of climbing plants and epiphytic vegetation of various kinds — the kiekie with its hydra-headed 
branches of waving tufts, the akakura and the waxy Metrosideros — and the ground below them 
covered with ferns and mosses and cryptogams in amazing variety. And so, on and on, through 
endless changes of timber-growths and woodland scenery, as the coach rattles along the road, disclosing 
new beauties at every turn— now through a river-bottom filled with close-growing kahikatea, then 
over a ridge covered with Fagus, dark and sombre ; now past a wide opening caused years since by 
the ravages of fire or flood and overgrown with the red-stemmed mako, the native myrtle, and a 
hundred other less conspicuous shrubs, bound and matted together by masses of tataramoa or covered 
