Animal life en the Pass is scarce indeed, but the kea, a bird which has probably got a far worse reputation than it deserves, is common about the top, and still more so at the foot, in the forest about Lake Mintaro, where we had an afternoon's narmless amusement throwing stones at them. We scored a couple of hits between us, but the birds did not seem to mind in the least. Everybody is familiar with the stories about these extraordinary- parrots killing sheep for the sake of the fat around the kidneys, and I have heard of one sheep station where as much as half-a-crown a head is paid to the rabbiter dor destroying Hhem. Neverthe less, I am rather inclined to think that the kea may bf to some extent the victim of the the universal tendency to "giye a dog a bad name and hang him.' At anyrate, except perhaps in a few special cases, he seems to mc to be entitled to the benefit of the Scottish verdict: "not proven," and I am glad to think that, »,wing to his great activity and the inaccessible character of his haunts, there is little danger of his being exterminated, and that his melancholy, cat like cry, "ke-aw, ke-aw," will always form a, feature of the remote alpine regions of New Zealand. ... Before descending the pass on the northern side it is necessary to make a considerable detour to the right, in order to avoid the dangerous precipice already mentioned. The descent is,accomplished rapidly, at first over boggy alpine meadow and .then through dense bush until we strike the new track from Milford Sound, now in course of con struction by the Government. This new track was nearly completed to the top of the pass, and will make "a great difference to the comfeftfc of the pedestrian. Some forty or fifty men, camped just below the pass on the Milford side, arC earning good wages at the work, over which a very large sum has already been expended. Our resting place for the night is the "Beech huts," in the Arthur Valley, and there we find ourselves in good time for tea, the actual distance from Mintaro being only about two miles in a straight Hue. 