Science may sometimes perambulate them, just as Science--with a handkerchief to her nose--may occasionally pick her steps about the Bounties; but none save _savants_ and sea-lions are likely to claim any interest in these noisome castles of the sea-fowl. Some of our larger outposts in the ocean are not repulsive by any means. If human society were of no account, the Kermadecs would be pleasant enough. One or two of them seem much more like Robinson Crusoe’s fertile island, as we read of it in Defoe’s pages, than is Juan Fernandez. Even the wild goats are not lacking. Flowering trees grow on well-wooded and lofty Raoul; Meyer Island has a useful boat-harbour; good fish abound in the warm and pellucid sea. To complete the geniality, the largest island--some seven or eight thousand acres in size--has a hot bathing-pool. One heroic family defy solitude there, cultivate the fertile soil, and grow coffee, bananas, figs, vines, olives, melons, peaches, lemons, citrons, and, it would seem, anything from grenadilloes to potatoes. Twenty years ago, or thereabout, our Government tempted a handful of settlers to try life there. A volcanic disturbance scared them away, however, and the one family has since plodded on alone. Stories are told of the life its members live, of their skill in swimming and diving, and their struggles with armies of rats and other troubles. Once when the steamer that visits them yearly was late, its captain found the mother of the family reduced to her last nib--with which she nevertheless had kept up her diary. On board the steamer was the lady’s eldest daughter, a married woman living in New Zealand. She was making a rough voyage of a thousand miles to see her mother--for two days. Sooner or later--if talk means anything--Auckland enterprise will set up a fish-curing station on Meyer Island. That, I suppose, will be an answer to the doubts which beset the minds of the Lords of the British Admiralty when this group, with its Breton name, was annexed to New Zealand. The colony asked for it, and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty were duly consulted. Their secretary wrote a laconic reply to the Colonial Office observing that if New Zealand wanted the Kermadecs my Lords saw “no particular reason” why “that colony” should not have “these islands or islets”; but of what possible use they could be to New Zealand my Lords couldn’t imagine.