right yellow wattle just behind the eye. We pass the "miners"
unmolested, for the minister tells me they are "no good" if you want
eating, whilst as specimens they are too common.

Then there are the tiny grey wrens, sitting about in scores,--so small
that an English wren looks monstrous beside them. Across the sunlight,
and away over a hollow, there flies a flock of green and yellow
paroquets, screaming as they fly. The brilliant colours of their wings
flash and glitter as they come from under the shadow of the trees. Now
we stalk a solitary piping-crow from tree to tree; but no sooner do
you get near enough to take a pot shot at him than he pipes his note,
and is off. The only way of getting at him is to proceed cautiously
from bush to bush; but even then, so shy a bird is he, that it is very
difficult to bag him.

There is a flock of great white sulphur-crested cockatoos clustered up
in a high tree. Can we get a shot? They seem to anticipate our design,
for on the moment they rise and wheel overhead with elevated crests,
uttering their shrill hoarse cries. These are the fellows that
occasion our farmers so much trouble by eating the freshly-sown grain.

Then look! on that branch are twenty or thirty lovely little swift
paroquets, with green and dark blue wings tipped with yellow. They are
climbing in and out of the scant leafage, under and over the limbs of
the tree, hanging on by their claws; and they only rise if they see us
near enough to take a shot at them, when they take to wing screaming,
and fly away in a flock.

Once, when I had gone out parrot-potting, with another young fellow
almost as green as myself, we had very nearly got bushed. We had been
following up a flock of Blue Mountain parrots--handsome birds--of
which we wanted specimens for our collection. After some slight
success, we turned our way homewards. The sun was just setting.
Marking its position in the heavens, we took what we thought was the
right direction. There were no tracks to guide us--no
landmarks--nothing but bush. After walking for some time, and looking
again at the light of the sky where the sun had gone down, we found
that we had made a circuit upon our track, and were walking exactly in
the opposite direction to our township. We hastily retraced our steps,
for we knew that it would soon be dark, as the twilight is so short in
Australia. Fortunately for us, it was a very clear night, and as the
stars came brightly out we saw bef