35 
V. 
THE STITCHBIRD OF LITTLE 
BARRIER ISLAND. 
ARMED with permission to land and with hands 
further strengthened by introductions to Mr Nelson, 
the best of all possible caretakers, I and my com- 
panion, John Leask, reached Little Barrier Island 
at daybreak one fine morning in early October. 
This sanctuary is, I believe, the stump of an old 
volcanic pile still, after years of quietude, so split 
and ritted that water a hundred or two feet above 
sea-level is unobtainable after a few days of 
drought; its streams, too, flow only during 
flood. 
Where in early times the aboriginal kauri 
forest has been cleared, manuka and kanuka 
clothe the hillsides. There are considerable tracts 
of low-growing woods tangled and roped with 
lawyer, clematis, and, most delayingly, with twisted 
growth of maugemange—climbing fern. It, as 
also the elegant slender tree-fern and others, were 
