Twice as large as Kapiti, and quite twice as picturesque, the Little Barrier Island, the northern bird-sanctuary, is otherwise little known. It has no history to speak of, though Mr. Shakespear, its care-taker, has gathered one or two traditions. A sharp fight, for instance, between two bands of Maori was decided on its shore; and for many years thereafter a tree which stood there was pointed out as the “gallows” on which the cannibal victors hung the bodies of their slain enemies. At another spot on the boulders of the beach an unhappy fugitive is said to have paddled in his canoe, flying from a defeat on the mainland. Landing exhausted, he found the islanders as merciless as the foes behind, and was promptly clubbed and eaten. However, the Little Barrier is to-day as peaceful an asylum as the heart of a persecuted bird could desire. The stitch-bird, no longer hunted by collectors, is once more increasing in numbers there, and has for companion the bell-bird--the sweetest of our songsters, save one,--which has been driven from its habitat on the main North Island. Godwits, wearied with their long return journey from Siberia, are fain, “spent with the vast and howling main,” to rest on the Little Barrier before passing on their way across the Hauraki Gulf. Fantails and other wild feathered things flutter round the care-taker’s house, for--so he tells us--he does not suffer any birds--not even the friendless and much-disliked cormorant--to be injured. Along with the birds, the tuatara lizard (and the kauri, pohutu-kawa, and other trees, quite as much in need of asylum as the birds) may grow and decay unmolested in the quiet ravines. The island lies forty-five miles from Auckland, and nearly twenty from the nearest mainland, so there is no need for it to be disturbed by anything worse than the warm and rainy winds that burst upon it from north-east and north-west. * * * * *