106 Transactions. — Zoology. 



land but on the small islands where the conditions of exist- 

 ence are so much more favourable. Mr. W. Hawkins, the well- 

 known collector, writing to me from the Chatham Islands in 

 August last, says, " The Fern-bird (Sphenceacus rufescens) 

 and the Black Kobin (Miro traversi) are gone. The Mako- 

 mako and Cabal us modestus are going fast ; and the Pigeon 

 too. In fact Pitt Island is the only place where Pigeons and 

 Bell-birds are to be got. . . . On the Sisters ten years 

 ago the Maoris got a thousand Albatroses ; last year they got 

 only three hundred and fifty. Tbey say that if I go there 

 I'll frighten the Albatros away altogether, so they have abso- 

 lutely prohibited my collecting there." 



I sball now proceed to place before you my customary 

 budget of ornithological notes. Dr. Sclater, the accomplished 

 editor of the Ibis, has referred in terms of commendation 

 to my practice of exhibiting at our meetings here the more 

 important of the specimens to which the observations refer. 

 I shall continue this practice, because it tends to keep up the 

 interest of members in what is being done in this department 

 of science. It is quite a mistake to suppose that because ex- 

 haustive works have appeared on the birds of New Zealand 

 nothing remains to be done by the ordinary observer. In 

 opposition to such a view, I may mention that since the publi- 

 cation of my last edition of " The Birds of New Zealand," in 

 1888, I have, through the medium of these periodical notes 

 (without including those contained in the present paper), 

 added no less than ten species to the list of our birds, recorded 

 thirty-four albinisms and other abnormal varieties, and made 

 original observations, more or less important, on eighty-four 

 ordinary species. Others have been working in the same 

 direction, and registering interesting facts, the most important 

 of these contributions being a paper on the birds of the Chat- 

 ham Islands by Mr. H. 0. Forbes, which appeared (with two 

 excellent illustrations) in the Ibis for October, 1893. 



Heteralocha acutirostris, Gould. (Huia.) 



Sir John Lubbock, in his charming volume " The Beauties 

 of Nature," in an account of what he terms the Hura (mean- 

 ing of course the Huia), pp. 48, 49, makes two mistakes. In 

 the first place he calls it a Crow, whereas it has been proved 

 to be a Starling ; and, in discussing the curious modification of 

 the bill in the two sexes and its use, he says, "When the 

 cock has dug down to the burrow the hen inserts her long bill 

 and draws out the grub, which they then divide between them" 

 — the italics are mine — " a very pretty illustration of the wife 

 as helpmate to the husband." 



Now, I believe I was the first to observe and record the 

 peculiar adaptation of the Huia's bill to its habits of life, in a- 



