Page:Through South Westland.djvu/193

Rh to where we were, runs up to 8,000 feet. The surveyor was a very mine of information. He told me of the tiny, short-tailed cuckoo, whose home is in New Guinea. It is but a couple or three inches long, yet it travels all those weary leagues of sea to nest in these remote solitudes, “and the ‘why’ of this,” said the surveyor, “is raising a very large question. Whether it was all land once, and the birds acquired the habit of flying south to nest; or a succession of islands, where they flitted from resting place to resting place—let the scientists tell us. Certain it is, we bushmen can tell the date of the month when first we hear their long-drawn whistling note—they arrive to a day, year after year, in their accustomed haunts." He told me, too, of the shining, or long-tailed, cuckoo, who also hails from New Guinea. It is a larger bird, mottled brown and white, and both have the habit of laying an egg in other birds’ nests, but neither has the cry of our bird at home. In both species it is more like a whistle. There was so much 1 wanted to know; secrets of the forest that unfolded a little to me now and then, but closed again before I grasped them. But we had all had a long day; the surveyor said “good-night,” and went out to where his man had lit a big fire under the trees, and where, he assured me, they would sleep sound, rolled in their blankets. Ted had a rug with him, and, protest as I might, he insisted on spreading it for me in the corner of the hut; and