332 Transactions. — Zoolo(jy. 



that poor bird, in defiance of the warring elements, continued 

 to protect her home and the treasure which it contained, until 

 she could do so no longer, and yielded up her life. That life 

 she could easily have saved had she been willing to abandon 

 the offspring which Nature had taught her so fervently to 

 cherish, and in endeavouring to preserve which she volun- 

 tarily remained and died. Occupied with such feelings and 

 reflections as these, I know not how long I might have sat 

 had I not been roused from my reverie by the barking of a 

 shepherd's dog. The sun had already set, the grey twilight 

 had begun to hide the distant mountains from my sight, and, 

 not caring to be benighted on such a spot, I wrapped a piece 

 of paper, as a winding-sheet, round the faithful and devoted 

 bird, and, forming a hole sufficiently large for the purpose, I 

 laid into it the mother and the eggs. I covered them with 

 earth and moss, and over all placed a solid piece of turf ; and, 

 having done so, and being more affected than I should perhaps 

 be willing to acknowledge, I left them to moulder into their 

 original dust, and went on my way." 



But to resume my subject : The effect of these foreign 

 introductions is to accelerate the threatened wiping-out of 

 an avifauna admitted to be one of the most interesting in the 

 world. Many of the species have already disappeared ; a 

 still larger number are, so to speak, on the border-land and 

 will ere long be extinct, whilst even the commonest species 

 exhibit year by year a steady diminution in numbers. What 

 the result will be in, say, twenty years from the present 

 time it is not difficult to predict. x\nd the consideration of 

 these facts brings me at once to the urgent necessity that 

 exists for completing our collections of these forms before it 

 is too late. Foreign museums are being enriched whilst our 

 local museums are practically at a standstill. By last mail I 

 received a letter from Canon Tristram, of Durham, informing 

 me that at a recent meeting of the Zoological Society, iu 

 London, the Hon. Walter Eothschild had exhibited a series of 

 no less than forty skins of our hitherto-rare Apteryx haasti, of 

 which, so far as I am aware, only eight specimens exist in all 

 our New Zealand nmseums. He adds that Mr. Eothschild 

 has obtained " enormous series " of other New Zealand birds. 

 For example, there are fifty-four specimens of the Chatham 

 Island Snipe, of which our local museums contain very few 

 examples ; and very large series of the beautiful Chatham 

 Island Shag (Phalacwcorax featJterstoni) , of which, so far as I 

 know, the Colonial Museum possesses the only example in the 

 colony ; and the still moi-e striking P. onsloivi, of which there 

 is no representative in any of our museums. Dr. Hartert, the 

 excellent curator of Mr. Rothschild's museum, in a letter to 

 myself states that the collection contains eighty spechnens of 



