The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1894-09-16

games of leapfrog and ball playing, and
flying kites, and boxing, and general
/ romp. They We're exhilarated with
mixture of gases: sulpnuric pnos-
| phoric, and carbonic, and forgot all
the proprieties that mountains
/ usually observe. But it was
/ not comedy. 1t was a tragedy of the
mountains, and all the King Lears, and
. the Macbeths, and the Hamlets, and the
Meg Merrilees of derangement and horror
were that night on the stage, of which
the belching fires were the footlights, and
flames hundreds of feet high were the
gorgeous upholstery. TOrnadoes of ashes.
Furnaces, seven times heated, in which
walked the Deity. Grand March of God
sounded by the avalanCheS. The earth
bombarding the heavens. Dantes In
ferno" lifted into the terrestrial. Maniac
elements tearing the clouds into
tatters and grinding rocks I'M
der their heels. That night of June 9,
that awful night in New Zealand, when
the native settlements went down under
the ashes o. bursting Tarawera as com
pletely as Pompeii and Herculaneum
under the burial of NesuVius, seemed to
play accompaniment to the words of the
old Book as much revered in New lea
land as in America, an accompaniment in
full dlapasOn, an earthquake with its foot
on the pedal; The perpetual hills did
bow" The mountains skipped like
rams" 1.-The hills melted like wax"
The foundations of the earth were
shaken; !" He looketh on the earth and it
trem bleth !"
That dowfall of the New Zealand Ter
races was only a conspicuous circumstance
in the history of the world. Mountains
are mortal, and they write their autobi-
ographies on leaves of stone. All the
mountains of New Zealand were nursed
in cradle of earthquake by parentage of
rock and glacier, and they will have their
descendants. You cannot bury mountains
unobserved. There must be black pail
of smoke, and dead March sounded by
orchestra of elements, and thunders toll
ing az the passing funeral of hills, aud
spaue OF fire TO dig their grave, and the
discharge of all
HEAVENS ARTILLERY
at their burial, and the solemn and over
whelming litany sounded: Earth to
earth, ashes TO ashes, dust to dust!"
You see it will be well for biologists to
come 10 New Zealand. Ornithologist
ought to come. Last evening, although
it is here -winter-New Zealands
July corresponding with Americas Jan
uary, although far from being so cold
was standing near the clump of trees
which still kept all their foliage, and
there were bird voices absolutely be-
wildering for numbers and sweetness. If
the notes of the music there rendered
by the winged choir had been written on
each leaf, the rendering could not have
been more dulcet and resonant. IL would
take more room and time than / possess
10 describe the pathological riches of
New Zealand. First of all, its
extinct Moa, whose skeleton stands
in the museum at Christ
church, wingless bird. or only
apologies for wings, but ten feet seven
inches high, neck like "a giraffe, and foot
as wide as a cancels. This Moa, the larg-
est bird whose skeleton has ever been
reticulated, its eggs the size of a small
bandboK. What the mastodon was among
quadrupeds, and the ichthyosaurus was
among fishes, the Moa was among birds.
But among the living birds in New lea
lands aviary are the Whale bird, black
on the back and white on the breast
morning rising from the night the HUH,
a sacred bird Of the aborlgines-but all
birds ought TO be sacred; the Parson
bird, so-called because the white feathers
round its neck give it the appearance Of a
white choker;" the Bell bird, with voice
like
A CHIME FROM THE TOWER.
the New Zealand pigeon, three times as
large as the American pigeon, and more
beautiful only because 10 has more ex-
panse Of wing and feathers on which 70
be beautiful the Kea, that wars on the
sheep, fastening itself on the back Of the
live sheep and not relaxing but peckiug
its way through the wool and the flesh
until the sheep is dead and the beak
reaches the fat around the kidneys, for
which this bird has a special appetite--a
habit learned probably by pecking at the
butchered sheep around the door Of the
/ shepherds hut; the Storm Petrol, like a
flake Of midnight the Crested Penguin /,