127. From the above it may be seen that definitely the bird disappears at certain seasons and the fact is well known to local natives. It is certainly true that the bird is never really plentiful on the island but around about December-February local whites can give a native cartridges and send him out shooting for the pot and can be reasonably certain of the boy coming back about midday with 2 or 3 birds if he leaves very early and goes to a good food area for the species. Whereas at other seasons of the year, full days of hunting might be spent and not a single speci- men even seen, as was done in my case. Also I had an island wide watch being kept for the bird, and allowing a large percentage for native laziness in not sending in reports, even so this leaves no possible doubt of an almost total absence of adult birds as only 2 reports came to hand in 4 weeks and investigation in both cases revealed juveniles only. As 4 Sundays were included in this period when natives even if lazy would have little to do to gain the reward and even from the most outlying places came in to the 2 main centres to attend church and merely had to tell at that time when and where birds were seen and I myself with other employed natives was covering all areas which natives did not frequently visit, one can consider it defi- nitely proven that the species had moved off the island in great numbers. Even had 25 per cent of the estimated popu- lation present in February remained, I should have had re- ports numbering at least 4 or 5 a week of its presence even allowing for failures to report sight records and should have seen at least 1 a day average myself. It is also worth recording that though the officers and engineers on the small interisland vessel which calls at all islands regularly,