113 
The Honey-eaters : The Tui 
One nest sent to me from Banks Peninsula looked little more 
than a big handful of cocksfoot from two feet to two feet six 
long, roughly bent to form a cup. 
Incubation and development of the young appear to be very 
speedy. Guthrie-Smith (GB, p. 156) notes the finding of a 
nest on the 12th November; on the 23rd the bird was sitting 
hard, and on the 11th December the young were gone. He 
notes that this is the only species he has known to sing on the 
nest. “We were close to her,” he writes, “yet she sang as if 
her song could have no ending. ” 
This most beautiful and attractive bird was made known in 
Europe on the publication, in 1/(7, of Cook s second voyage. 
“The poy-bird,” he writes (GY, Vol. 1, p. 98), is less than the 
wattle-bird [kokako]. The feathers of a fine mazarine blue, 
except those of its neck, which are of a most beautiful silvei- 
grey, and two or three short white ones, which are on the pinion 
joint of the wing. Under its throat hang two little tufts of 
curled, snow-white feathers, called its poies, which being the 
Otaheitean word for ear-rings, occasioned our giving that 
name to the bird; which is not more remarkable for the beauty 
of its plumage than for the sweetness of its note. The flesh is 
also most delicious, and was the greatest luxury the woods 
afforded us.” In a full-page plate facing the previous page 
in the volume, where the bird is shewn seated on a spiay of 
fuchsia, it is called the poe-bird. It was apparently described 
and figured the year before, 1776, in Brown s Illustrations of 
Zoology” (BN, Vol. 1, p. 95). 
The tui was brought alive to England on 23rd January, 
1849, when H.M.S. Dido arrived at Portsmouth from Auckland. 
She had left the latter place on the 4th November, 1848, 
making the passage in 77 days, “the most extraordinary 
passage on record.” The London “Times of 24th Januaiv 
has this paragraph:—‘ ‘ The Dido has brought home a fen 
valuable curiosities for naturalists, the chief of which is a small 
black bird about the size of the English blackbird, called the 
Tui (the parson-bird of Captain Cook), believed to be the first 
of the species ever brought to England alive. Mam previous 
