136 Bird-Song: and New Zealand Song Birds 
ever, sat above them, and repeated the lesson. Finally the young 
ones flew off in different directions. The lesson was given within 
a few feet of the observer. On the second occasion only one 
young one was being taught. Its imitations were much better 
and it appeared more docile. It is a far cry from a tui to a sea¬ 
gull, but apparently even that unmusical bird needs teaching- 
for Mr. J. L. Bennett, late caretaker of Kapiti, has told me of a 
“singing lesson” (as he supposed I would call it) he witnessed 
on the beach; an old sea-gull teaching a young one the proper 
use of its voice. 
I am pleased that our tui should be the first of the Maori birds 
to stand for his cinema-portrait. The illustration shews him 
arrested in his sipping of the honey of the flax-flowers by the 
clicking of the machinery. A few seconds ’ observation reassured 
him, and he resumed his rifling of the flowers. He has paid the 
price. He is immortalized. 
The boldness of the tui, his beauty, his eloquence, his gestures, 
his mimicry, made him a great favourite of the Maori. He 
appeared to become reconciled to captivity, and was taught 
speeches of welcome; he was also said to indulge in impromptu 
speech-making. There was a proverb, applied to a good orator, 
Me lie Ixorokoro tin” (CK, p. 68). “How eloquent he is; he 
has the thioat of a tui. ” In the song of the tui, it was the words 
rathei than the tune that appealed to the Maori;—the vocaliza¬ 
tions lather than the intervals; and this fact explains preference 
of the jews harp by the Maori as a musical instrument;—it 
could be made to speak. An expert player would tangi on his 
instrument, and after hearing the tangi two or three times, his 
hearers would be able to repeat, almost word for word, the thing 
he intended to say. Hence the narrow range, and the quarter- 
tones in Maori airs; the tune is hardly more than a speech tune. 
So in the song (52) ; the vocalization, “Sweet, a longed boon” 
adds a wealth of feeling that does not lie in the mere melody. 
The very words of Sappho,” says Swinburne, “were heard 
and recognised in the notes of the nightingale. ” (SCP, p. xxi.) 
The following from Grey’s “Poetry of the New Zealanders” 
(quoted in BN, Yol. 1, pp. 96-7), is a speech taught to a tame tui, 
