82 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Its very existence, as we now find it, is an illustration of the 

 truth, as formulated by Wallace himself, that "greater swift- 

 ness, increased cunning, nocturnal habits, change of colour, 

 or the power of climbing trees and living for a time on their 

 foliage or fruit, may be the means adopted by different species 

 to bring themselves into harmony with the new conditions ; 

 and by the continued survival of those individuals only which 

 varied sufficiently in the right direction the necessary modifi- 

 cations of structure or of function would be brought about, 

 just as surely as man has been able to breed the greyhound to 

 hunt by sight and the foxhound by scent, or has produced 

 from the same wild plant such distinct forms as the cauli- 

 flower and the Brussels sprouts." 



I have referred to certain superficial characters ; and for the 

 purposes of our argument we need not at present go beyond 

 these. The Aptcryx then, I take, to be the most specialized 

 type of its kind — an extreme form of degeneracy, using that 

 term in its Darwinian sense. But, besides Aptcryx australis, 

 there are five other species, more or less distinct the one from 

 the other, but all closely allied in every respect, size and 

 colour being the only distinguishing characters. I will 

 enumerate these species, with the ascertained range of each. 

 Apteryx australis, already mentioned, inhabits the southern- 

 most parts of the South Island ; Apteryx mantelli (=A. bulleri, 

 Sharpe) is spread over the North Island ; Apteryx oiveni 

 (Gould) is met with in the wooded country in the northern 

 and eastern portions of the South Island; Apteryx haasti 

 (Potts) in the Heaphy Ranges and further south ; Aptcryx occi- 

 dentalis (Eothschild) on the western slopes of the Southern 

 Alps, and, curiously enough, in the Tararua Ranges on the 

 west coast of the North Island ; and, lastly, Aptcryx latvryi 

 (Eothschild) on Stewart Island. * The dividing -lines be- 



* This is the same as Apteryx maxima of my paper (Trans. N.Z. 

 Inst., vol. xxiv., pp. 91, 92). Mr. Walter Rothschild, in his revision of 

 the genus (Ibis, 1893, pp. 573-576), says, "Aptcryx maximus is almost a 

 fictitious species, though I am inclined to agree with Professor Hutton 

 that it was only an overgrown A. haasti. The name was published 

 originally, without a description, by Bonaparte in the ' Comptes Rendus,' 

 xliii., p. 841, taken from an unpublished manuscript of Jules Verreaux, 

 and then Professor Hutton described a foot in his ' Catalogue of the Birds 

 of New Zealand ' and ascribed it to this species. Both references, how- 

 ever, distinctly refer to a bird from the South Island. In 1890 Sir Walter 

 Buller finally announced that he had discovered the true A. viaximus on 

 Stewart Island, and I am fortunate in possessing the entire series from 

 his collection; but I most emphatically say that this species cannot be 

 A, maximus of Verreaux, and therefore I have much pleasure in naming 

 it Apteryx laioryi, after Sir W. Lawry Buller. Sir W. Buller fully 

 described this bird before the Wellington Scientific Society. All that I 

 shall add is, therefore, that, though the differences between it and A. 



