I have just come in from an exquisite walk with our kind host. He does love this island, which he has beautified with so much care, and has been showing me all manner of interesting things. Amongst others, in a quiet glade of most carefully preserved native bush, we saw a large number of lovely little tree-kangaroos, of which Sir. George imported the first pair from New Guinea, and which have already multiplied exceedingly. They are small animals, as beautiful as they are rare, with the richest brown fur, and when feeding in the grassy glades you would naturally mistake them for hares; but at the faintest sound they sit upright, and standing on their long hind-legs, they bound away with a succession of leaps, and reappear springing from bough to bough, and peering cautiously from among the dark foliage. Besides these squirrel-like beauties, there are large numbers of common kangaroos, or wallabies, as they are commonly called; and herds of Indian elk, fallow deer, and even red deer, roam at large. Mr Maudslay looks forward to some pleasant days of pheasant-shooting, and also in pursuit of wild cattle and wild pigs. As to the wallabies, they are almost beneath the dignity of a true sportsman—so very deliberate is their strange leaping retreat, and so frequently do they pause to gaze wistfully at him. I believe that even these are imported animals, and that New Zealand, like Fiji, possessed literally no indigenous quadrupeds except a small rat. There are some specimens of the wingless birds still living on this isle as in a haven of refuge; and amongst the house treasures, there is a skeleton of the great extinct moa, which is like a gigantic ostrich. * * * * * _January 12._ To-day we have had quite a novel excitement. A large party of Maoris arrived in half-a-dozen good English boats. They were fishing for sharks—not the common shark, though it also haunts these seas, but a small kind, rarely exceeding six feet in length, which they dry for winter food. As all the Maoris come here on the most friendly terms, Mr George (married to Sir George Grey’s niece) took Jack, Nevil, and myself on board their biggest boat. They had already caught upwards of fifty, which were thrown into the hold, and we saw ten more, caught with bait. When hauled in, the sharks receive a violent blow on the nose, which apparently kills them at once. In some seasons the Maoris catch as many as 15,000 off this island, and they take them to a small isle in the neighbourhood where they hang them up to dry; you can imagine how fragrant the atmosphere becomes! Mr George tells me he has seen a wall three hundred feet long, and at least six feet high, of this unsavoury winter store.