Australia has a wild bee of her own (of course, too, there are European bees introduced by apiarists, distilling splendid honey from the wild flowers of the continent). The aborigines had an ingenious way of finding the nests of the wild bee. They would catch a bee, preferably at some water-hole where the bees went to drink, and fix to its body a little bit of white down. The bee would be then released, and would fly straight for home, and the keen-eyed black would be able to follow its flight and discover the whereabouts of its hive--generally in the hollow of a tree. The Australian black, having found a hive, would kill the bees with smoke and then devour the whole nest, bees, honeycomb, and honey. Australian birds are very numerous and very beautiful. The famous bird-of-paradise is found in several varieties in Papua and other islands along Australia's northern coast. The bird-of-paradise was threatened with extinction on account of the demand for its plumes for women's hats. So the Australian Government has recently passed legislation to protect this most beautiful of all birds, which on the tiniest of bodies carries such wonderful cascades of plumage, silver white in some cases, golden brown in others. [Illustration: A SHEEP DROVER. PAGE 26.] Some very beautiful parrots flash through the Australian forest. It would not be possible to tell of all of them. The smallest, which is known as the grass parrakeet, or "the love-bird," is about the size of a sparrow. I notice it in England carried around by gipsies and trained to pick out a card which "tells you your fortune." From that tiny little green bird the range of parrots runs up to huge fowl with feathers of all the colours of the rainbow. There are two fine cockatoos also in Australia--the white with a yellow crest, and the black, which has a beautiful red lining to its sable wings. A flock of black cockatoos in flight gives an impression of a sunset cloud, its under surface shot with crimson. Cockatoos can be very destructive to crops, especially to maize, so the farmers have declared war upon them. The birds seem to be able to hold their own pretty well in this campaign, for they are of wonderful cunning. When a crowd of cockatoos has designs on a farmer's maize-patch, the leader seems to prospect the place thoroughly; he acts as though he were a general, providing a safe bivouac for an army; he sets sentinels on high trees commanding a view of all points of danger. Then the flock of cockatoos settles on the maize and gorges as fast as it can. If the farmer or his son tries to approach with a gun, a sentinel cockatoo gives warning and the whole flock clears out to a place of safety. As soon as the danger is over they come back to the feast.