get near enough to one to find out, but perhaps if you did get close and surprised it, it would be so mad at you that it would answer back.

The Piccaninny followed his tui up and up, but it flitted from tree top to tree top, and he could hear it tolling a bell and cracking a whip, and chuckling at him, and finally it flew away, and that was the last of it.

The Piccaninny, tired out, climbed up into a tea tree bush, and swung himself gently to-and-fro until he rocked himself to sleep among the pretty little starry flowers, a thing he should never have done unless a Piccaninny Boy Scout had been posted near by in case of danger. He was so drowsy, that he never heard a voice saying:

"Oh! look here, George, this is a lovely spray!" nor felt the spray on which he was sleeping torn from its mother-bush, and carried away. It was taken into a big room in a big house, and there on a big table it was placed in a silver vase.

It was then the Piccaninny woke up because the bough had ceased to sway gently up and down. At first he was very surprised, and then, poking his little brown head out, he was horribly frightened. Instead of the green leafy arch above him, he saw a flat white thing, and all around him were enormous strange objects. Craning out still farther he over-balanced himself and fell thud! upon a hard, polished flat plain. He tried to scramble to his feet, but the ground under him was so slippery that he could only crawl gingerly on all fours and flounder about on it.

Someone exclaimed suddenly:

"Oh, look at that horrid brown insect. It must have come from the tea tree. Fetch the brush and dustpan."

And someone else cried excitedly:

"Kill it! Kill it!"

But a third someone said quite calmly:

"Nonsense! It's quite harmless!"

Then a huge bristly thing fell upon him, and smothered and gasping he felt himself swept along, and then flying through the air. Again he fell with a thud upon something hard, but it was only the hardness of the good brown earth, and the tall green grass closed protectingly over him.

You may be sure he lost no time in scuttling back to the bush, and he didn't hunt tuis again for many a long day.

Bush Babies

KOWHAI BLOSSOM.

The Bush Babies lie
In cradles of gold;
They haven't a stitch,
But they never take cold;
For the golden flowers,
And the golden sun,
And the golden smiles
Upon everyone—
Keep the world warm and bright
And flooded with light
For the Bush Babies
In their cradles of gold.

The Bush Babies come out of the kowhai flowers. They are the prettiest little things—fair as lilies with golden ringlets, and little golden peaked caps, bent over like a horn upon their heads. I don't think they wear anything else much, just an odd little fluff of green here and there, like stray feathers that have stuck to them.

"They haven't a stitch, But they never take cold."

The Piccaninnies love to play with them; indeed, they're favourites with everyone, and it's the prettiest sight in the world at early morning, to see each Bush Baby crawling out of its cradle flower on its little tummy, yawning or smiling or stretching, or blinking at the light with round sleepy eyes.

But you would never get up early enough to see that.

They tell a story in the Bush about a Bush Baby and a Piccaninny—and laugh about it to this day. The Piccaninny told the Bush Baby that he would find some honey for her. Now the Bush Babies love honey better than anything else in the world, so she put her hand in his sweetly and off they set.

They came to the edge of the swamp where the tall branching flax flowers grow (the flax is not in flower when the kowhai is, but I can't spoil my story for that), and every flax flower was alive with birds, dipping, and sipping the honey, so the two little creatures wandered off again.

The Piccaninny led the Bush Baby to several other flowers, but at every one some bird or insect would edge them away, crying out:

"We got here first!"

"The Bush Lawyer, the most spiteful plant in the bush."

At last the Bush Baby began to cry. They are very young and tender things, these Babies, and this one had been caught and scratched by the Bush Lawyer, the most spiteful plant in the Bush, and had nearly fallen into a creek, and the peak of its cap was dangling into its eye, and it was a long way from home.

To comfort it the Piccaninny put his little brown arms right round it and loved it, and they both sat down on a fallen tree to rest while he wiped its eyes with a soft green leaf—they didn't know about pocket handkerchiefs yet.

Oh! The next moment out of a hole in the tree flew a swarm of angry bees, with humming wings and large fierce eyes and tails curved down to strike.

The Bush Baby was so astonished that she fell off the log, and there she lay face down on the green moss, so still that the bees took her for a fallen kowhai blossom and droned away from her.

But the Piccaninny ran for his life, with all the bees after him, and when the noise of their angry buzzing had died away, the Bush Baby got up and had a rare feast of honey, and went back home very sticky and blissful and contented.

As for the Piccaninny, who had escaped the bees, by lying down and pretending to be a Tea Tree Jack (they call that camouflage now), he only sniffed when they told him about it, and said:

"Pooh! I knew that honey was there all the time. I said I'd find her some and I did!"

How like a boy!

hen the tree of gold
Turns a tree of green,
The dear Bush Babies
Are no more seen.
To fields of gold
They have gaily run,
And are lost in the light
Of the golden sun;
Or caught in the mist
Of gold that lies
Like a net of dreams
On Day's sleepy eyes.
But behold! next year
They are here! They are here!
They come trooping back
Down the wander-track,
Like rays of