BuLLER. — On the Ornithology of New Zealand. 3 



hand, the Takahe can run very actively, and gave a good chase 

 to those who captured the earUer specimens, while its power- 

 ful beak must be a formidable weapon, one would think, which 

 it could use with effect on enemies when at close quarters. 

 The nature of its food is practically unknown. The previous 

 specimens did not reach scientific hands till after the removal 

 of the viscera ; the present specimen, however, reached me in 

 such excellent condition that I have been able to examine all 

 the internal organs, and I find the stomach and intestines 

 filled with a kind of grass with cylindrical leaves, all cut up 

 into lengths of |- in. to-^in. But whether this is its normal 

 food or not is uncertain. Like its predecessors, it was caught 

 in winter on low-lying grounds near the water ; but there is no 

 doubt but that it lives usually in the higher and rougher bush, 

 and it was probably driven down to the water's edge by stress 

 of weather and the consequent difficulty of getting enough to 

 eat. Certain it is that, though thoroughly healthy in every 

 way, there was no fat in the body such as one finds in a 

 normally well-fed bird ; moreover, its beak seems needlessly 

 powerful for cutting up grass. 



"The present specimen is a young female, possibly not quite 

 fully grown. The measurements of the various external parts 

 of the body agree almost exactly with those given by Sir W. 

 Buller for the bird examined by him nearly twenty years ago. 

 Yes ; it is nineteen years since the previous specimen was 

 captured, and — pace Mr. Park — it is uncertain whether any 

 have even been seen since 1879 ; at any rate, I believe there 

 is no record of such a fact. Even a greater length of time 

 separates the capture of the third from the first specimen — to 

 wit, thirty years — for it was in 1849 that the first specimen 

 ever seen by scientific folk was chased and captured by a 

 party of sealers in Duck Cove, Dusky Sound. Of this the 

 skin alone remains, stuffed and set up in the British Museum ; 

 the rest of the bird was eaten by the captors. The second 

 specimen, which was caught in 1851 by Maoris on Secretary 

 Island, Thompson's Sound, also found its way to the British 

 Museum. The third specimen was caught by a rabbiter's dog 

 (1879) on the eastern shore of Lake Te Anau, and its remains 

 were purchased for the Dresden Museum for one hundred 

 guineas. The three spots at which the captures were made 

 are at the corners of a triangle, each side of which measures 

 about a hundred miles. It is scarcely surprising, then, that 

 this, the fourth specimen of the bird, now temporarily deposited 

 in the Otago University Museum, should be the cause of 

 some excitement amongst all those — and these are happily 

 many — who take an interest in the birds of New Zealand, 

 especially in those which, like the Takahe and the Kakapo, 

 are on the wav to extermination — a result of the interference 



