MINA—MOA 575 



very stout — the difficulty of telling one from the other Avould be 

 exceedingly great/ and according to the canon laid down by Mr. 

 Wallace Tylas must be the mimic, because if it be allied to Hypsi- 

 petes, it has wholly thrown off the sombre and inconspicuous 

 coloration of that genus to assume one that is of a very normal 

 Shrike-like character. 



It must be borne in mind, however, that all cases of close simi- 

 larity of plumage are not necessarily cases of Mimicry. Of this 

 the genera Sturnella (Meadow-Lark) and Macronyx (Kalkoentje) 

 are examples, for these, the latter being a peculiarly African and 

 the former a peculiarly American form, have no points of contact, 

 any more than have the Snowy Petrel of the Antarctic and the 

 equally white Ivory-Gull of the Arctic Seas. In these cases 

 Mimicry is impossible, but even where it is not only possible but 

 even probable, we must always remember that the Mimicry, how- 

 ever produced, is unconscious. 



MINA or MINOK, see Grackle. 



MINIVET, Blyth's name, since adopted by Anglo-Indian writers, 

 for birds of the genus Fericrocotus, a beautiful group of some 20 

 species or more, wherein the males are generally black and rose- 

 colour and the females grey and saffron, the tints differing in the 

 several forms, while a few have no bright colouring at all. The 

 range of the genus extends from Affghanistan through India, 

 Bui-ma and China to Manchuria and Japan on the north, and to 

 Java and Lombock on the south, and some of the islands, as 

 Loochoo and Hainan, seem to have peculiar species. Fericrocotus 

 appears to belong to the group containing Campephaga, if that be 

 regarded as distinct from the Laniidae, as it probably is. 



MIRE-DROMBLE and MIRE-DRUM, local names of the 

 Bittern. 



MISSEL-BIRD or MISSEL-TSrUSH, vulgar corruptions of 

 Mistletoe-bird or Mistletoe-THRUSH. 



MOA, supposed to be the Maori name for the extinct Ratite 

 birds comprehending the genus Dinornis and its allies ; - and now 



^ Xenopirostris polleni and all the forms of Tylas are described and -vvell 

 figured in M. Grandidier's great work just cited (pp. 432-434, pis. 169, 170 A. fi^'. 

 2, 170 B. lig. 2 ; pp. 376, 379, pis. 141, fig. 2, 141 A. fig. 2, 143, 144, 144 A.)° 



" The word, however, has several other meanings, and Sir James Hector has 

 kindly communicated to this work the suggestion that applied to a Bird it was 

 probably sounded more like Morah, as latterly pronounced by the natives of the 

 South Island, for it had dropped out of use among the northern tribes, from 

 whom the vocabulary was collected by the early missionaries, one of whom 

 (Bishop Hadfield) said that not conceiving, when so engaged, the former existence 

 of so large a bird, he had never been able to obtain the precise meaning of the 

 word, and it is impossible now to be certain as to its sound. 



