278 Transactions. — Zoology. 



To this I reply that Mr. Huddleston's article on the kea i& 

 the best I have seen on the subject, and, so far as my own 

 experience goes, is reliable, and for this reason I specially 

 obtained that number of the " Journal of Science " which con- 

 tained Mr. Huddleston's paper, and forwarded it to Mr. 

 Wallace : hence his letter to me thereon. 



It must be remembered that this bird, having for its 

 habitat the tops of alpine ranges, is seen by few other than 

 shepherds and owners of sheep who are hardy enough to head 

 the sheep-mustering parties, and whose business it is to search 

 the rocky mountain-tops in summer for sheep requiring to be 

 shorn or docked, and in winter, about the end of June, to 

 collect, extricate, and drive downward sheep from the then 

 heavily snow-clad summits. An account of this latter 

 dangerous work I gave in a back volume of Transactions. . 

 Such are the men who can give the life-history of the kea, and 

 of these I claim to have been one. But such doings are now a 

 matter of retrospection. 



Since writing the above I have been able to place my 

 hand on Mr. F. F. C. Huddleston's paper. The passage in 

 " Darwinism " to which he takes exception is the following: 

 " It [the kea] belongs to the family of brush-tongued parrots, 

 and naturally feeds on the honey of flowers and the insects 

 which frequent them, together with such fruits or berries 

 as are found in the region. Till quite recently this composed 

 its whole diet, but since the country it inhabits has been 

 occupied by Europeans it has developed a taste for a car- 

 nivorous diet, with alarming results. It began by picking 

 the sheepskins hung out to dry, or the meat in the process 

 of being cured. About 1868 it was first observed to attack 

 living sheep, which had frequently been found with raw and 

 bleeding wounds on their backs. Since then it is stated that 

 the bird actually burrows into the living sheep, eating its way 

 down to the kidneys, which form its special delicacy." 



Mr. Huddleston says, — 



"The reason, I believe, that the bird has been charged 

 with eating the kidney of the sheep it attacks is that the 

 loin or rump of the sheep is the broadest part whereon it 

 can get an easy grip. As the sheep feels its assailant it 

 runs away, with the bird holding on and naturally having 

 its beak over the, kidneys, where it sets to work.. ... I 

 have found large numbers of sheep with only a very small 

 hole in the back, about the size of a crown, which being 

 examined showed a cavity beneath as large as a man's hand, 

 in which the backbone and ribs were perfectly bare. Others 

 I found with holes in the side through which the intestines 

 had been drawn, the sheep being still alive, and in some 

 instances the wound had healed and apparently formed 



