40 



THE MUSEUM. 



inaccessible interior. From the mod- 

 ern traditions and songs it seems that 

 the early Maori subsisted to a larc;e ex- 

 tent upon these birds and slauf^htered 

 them m great numbers, which fact ac- 

 counts for the great quantity of bones 

 sometimes found spread over a very 

 limited area. 



The kiwi itself is a small bird, com- 

 paratively, standing a littla less than 

 two feet high when erect. Its plum- 

 age is a dull, nearly uniform gray, or 

 brownish in one variety, each feather 

 barred with fine transverse markings 

 of darker. The feathers are very 

 coarse and webless, feeling more like 

 hair under the hand. The wings are 

 rudimentary, being composed of nearly 

 cartiiagenous bone and less than two 

 inches long altogether. Its bill is long 

 and straight, tapering in an easy curve 

 to the tip which is highly sensitive. 

 The bird in fact seems to find and 

 recognize its food more by feeling with 

 its bill than by sight or smell The 

 kiwi is nocturnal, hiding by day in 

 the most tangled bush. It lays an 

 egg disproportionately lajge to its size 

 and its gestation and incubation period 

 are correspondingly lengthy. The 

 eggs are deposited in a hollow under 

 the roots of some tree or bush, the 

 original hole being shaped and adjust- 

 ed to its owners satisfaction by the 

 female. A peculiar thing is that all 

 the female has to do is to make the. 

 nest and lay the egg, the male taking 

 charge of the incubation and young 

 birds, while his partner goes off and 

 seeks a new mate, a wise provision in 

 so unprolific a species. 



The Huia. the royal bird of the 

 Maories, is a member of the large fam- 

 ily Corvida;. It is interesting on ac- 

 count of the great structural differences 

 between the se.xes. Its color is black 

 with bright orange wattles and white 

 tip to tail. It is the bill of pure ivory 

 whiteness, though, that strikes one 

 forcibly. The male is provided with 

 one much the general form of the 

 meadow lark's but a little larger at 

 the base, fairly long, slightly decurved 



and tapering gradually to the point. 

 Tha head and neck are heavily built 

 and provided with strong muscles to 

 do chiseling like that of the woodpeck- 

 er's. The female has a long slender 

 bill, nearly twice as long as the male's, 

 much decurved and with a beautiful even 

 taper The head and neck are compar- 

 atively slightly built. The two se.xes 

 feed in different ways. They are very 

 fond of a certain grub found in decay- 

 ed trees and logs. The male boldly 

 drills in for his favorite food but the 

 female prods about the crevices, and 

 with her long forceps-like mandibles, 

 draws out the unwilling grub from the 

 deepest holes. Sometimes the male 

 after excavating cannot reach the de- 

 sired insect with his heavy aill where- 

 upon the female inserts hers and se- 

 cures it for herself. 



The kea is a bird claiming our at- 

 tention through something unprece- 

 dented in the annals of natural history. 

 Here is a bird whose entire habits have 

 become changed while we have been 

 watching it. It would be most inter- 

 esting to observe what alterations in 

 structure these changes in their mode 

 of life will cause. This, alas, is near- 

 ly impossible though, for to the loss of 

 science but for the gain of husbandry 

 this kind is doomed to speedy extinc- 

 tion. When white men first appeared 

 in New Zealand the kea was a fruit- 

 eating parrot inhabiting the snow 

 mountains of Otago. It was an en- 

 tirely inoffensive bird except when its 

 overwhelming curiosity tempted it intO' 

 the open cabin of some absent rancher 

 away with his flocks; then it tore ev- 

 erything tearable, broke everything 

 breakable and bent everything bend- 

 able — everything from the clothes on 

 the bed to the tin culinary utensils. 



When the sheep were introduced it 

 commenced its investigations on the 

 raw sheep skins spread out on the 

 roofs of the huts. After tearing some 

 of them to pieces it acquired a taste 

 for mutton fat. Then it began to de- 

 vour the freshly slaughtered carcasses 

 of sheep hung up outside. Here it 



