(From a specimen sent from Australia to the New York Zoological Park)] Amongst other noteworthy Australian birds is the Lyre Bird, in two or three species. This is a distant connection of thrushes and warblers, the size of a pheasant, and with very pheasantlike habits. Although the colour of its body is simply brown of various tints, the male bird has a most remarkable tail, the larger feathers of which exactly reproduce the form of a lyre. This creature is one of the minor wonders of the world, and it is therefore surprising that the great Commonwealth of Australia should take no measures to prevent its extermination at the hands of thoughtless and ignorant settlers, for, unlike the cockatoos, it does no damage to crops. Australia also possesses the Black Swan, and it has a strange-looking, long-legged Goose, which has scarcely any web between its toes. There are numerous Eagles and Hawks, but there is no Vulture. There is also no True Crow, but there are Choughs and many crow-like developments of the Shrike, Oriole, and Starling groups, and in the extreme north of Australia, besides one or two Birds of Paradise, there are the singular Bower Birds (really belonging to the same family), who build little palaces and ornamental gardens of sticks, shells, feathers, pebbles, and other bright and attractive objects, as places in which they can go through their courtship ceremonies. The mound-building Megapodes or Brush Turkeys (which do not hatch their eggs by sitting on them, but bury the egg in a mound of decaying vegetation) also inhabit eastern and northern Australia, and are the only representatives there of the gallinaceous order. Amongst Kingfishers is the celebrated Laughing Jackass, which lives not on fish but on insects and carrion. Australia has no Woodpeckers, no Hornbills, no Cuckoos, and no True Pheasants, and a good many other bird families are remarkable for their absence from this region. The scenery of New Zealand, in contrast to that of Australia, is nearly everywhere beautiful--as nature made it--though the modern settlers have robbed the island of much of its loveliness by cutting down the forests recklessly, destroying the ferns, and shooting the song birds. In the North Island of New Zealand are the most remarkable examples of volcanic activity, and this region has, or had--for they sometimes disappear in earthquake convulsions--beautiful crater lakes of deep blue or emerald green and terraces of congealed lava or pumicestone that assume lovely tints of pink, pale yellow, green or bluish grey.