136 BIRD LIFE ON ISLAND AND SHORE 
the ground and as fresh, we gathered each morn- 
ing only on certain spots. They had either been 
inadvertently scraped forth from the shallow side 
passages of ramified burrows, or been laid on the 
ground by hens unable to obtain entry to their 
own proper holes. There may have been, and 
probably were, on Kotiwhenu alone scores of clans 
of Mutton birds breeding at periods differing 
from one another by only a few days. In that 
great shop there might have been procured “ fresh 
eggs,’ “new-laid eggs,” “country eggs,” and 
““ egas.”? Whether therefore feeding in mid-ocean, 
drawing in at nightfall towards land, or nesting 
in the peat, the vast seemingly uniform multitude 
is in truth broken up into communities, com- 
panies, bands, and families as pronouncedly as 
are the millions of a great city, where a man 
may live for years without knowledge of his 
neighbour. 
Perhaps that affection and friendliness, so absent 
as regards the race, may elsewhere find expression, 
may find expression in the mated pairs. Lengthy 
farewells are at any rate exchanged between one 
mated Petrel and another. I remember one bird, 
inadvertently disturbed by me at dawn and pur- 
posely thwarted a second time, was still resolute 
in his determination to return, for a third time 
he scrambled up the steep slope of his newly 
vacated burrow. There, unmindful of my pres- 
