ack some bush flowers, very
beautiful and interesting when closely examined, especially the blue
holly, a plant with a holly-like leaf and a blue pea-shaped flower.
Two or three varieties of blue erica, tiny heaths, and epacris were
also very pretty. It is curious how all, even the smallest of the bush
flowers, run to bottle-brush just as readily as the great banksias and
eucalypti, and what strange little bottle-brushy appendages they all
have.

[Illustration: An Aboriginal]

Mabelle also brought some beautiful black cockatoos' feathers. Those
of the male bird have a band of brilliant scarlet right across them,
which looks so artificial that when a fan made of these feathers was
sent lately to New Zealand nobody would believe that it had not been
cleverly painted. The female bird has a light yellow and fawn-coloured
tail, more delicate in colour though not so brilliant as her mate's
plumage. We saw a great flight of black cockatoos yesterday. These
seemed to have white in their tails instead of red. Cockatoos are very
affectionate and loyal to one another--a fact of which those who kill
or capture them take advantage; for if they succeed in wounding a bird
they tie it up in a tree, where, so long as it continues to cry, not
one of its companions will leave it, but will hover around, allowing
themselves to be shot rather than desert a comrade. It is a great pity
these handsome birds devour the grain so terribly that settlers are
obliged to wage a war of extermination against them. Very different is
the behaviour under similar circumstances of the kangaroo, in whom I
have in consequence lost much of my interest. When hard pressed the
doe will take her offspring out of her pouch and fling it to the dogs
to gain time for her own escape. The meat of the joeys, as the young
ones are called, is by far the best, and tastes something like hare,
though it is rather tough and stringy. The flesh of the older animals
is more like that of red deer. Both require to be well basted, and
eaten with red currant jelly, to make them at all palatable.

_Sunday, May 15th._--Such a lovely day--more like an ideal May morning
in England than an Australian winter's day. We attended service in a
picturesque ivy-covered edifice.

After lunch a great many workpeople and others came on board, by
invitation, to see the yacht, as it was impossible for them to visit
it on any other day. The blue waters of the Sound looked quite gay
with the little