338



Dr. Graham Benshaw,



MANTELL’S APTERYX.


By Graham Benshaw, M.D., F.B.S.E.


“ We have here an illustration of the value of possessing living examples of

rare and little-known animals.”— Mr. A. D. Bartlett on a species of Apteryx.


The first aviculturist to keep Mantell’s Apteryx appears to

have been the Bev. Mr. Yate, of Waimate, New Zealand. In

January, 1834, he received a single specimen, which he kept alive,

and probably intended to send to London—a live Apteryx, or even a

dead one, being then much desired at the Zoo. The only example

then in England was one in the museum of Lord Derby; so little

was the bird known that on the Continent its very existence was

questioned. Lord Derby set all doubt at rest by forwarding his

unique specimen to London ; it was unstuffed, and exhibited before

the Zoological Society on February 12th, 1833. Mr. Yarrell then

described the bird, and appealed for more specimens on behalf of the

Society ; and Mr. Macleay, the Colonial Secretary for New South

Wales, asked Mr. Yate to try and get one. A second individual was

duly procured, as we have seen ; unfortunately, in Mr. Yate’s absence

from home, it died. The bird had lived for nearly a fortnight; alive

or dead it was worth preserving, and one of Mr. Yate’s boys managed

to skin it. The legs, however, rotted off, and this mangled relic w ? as

all that reached Mr. Macleay. He sent it to England to the

Zoological Society; imperfect as it was, it had scientific value as

the second knowm specimen of a very rare bird.


The first Mantell’s Apteryx to reach Europe alive was a

female, received at the Zoo in 1851. She was a gift from Lieut.-

Governor Eyre, and had travelled in state by H.M.S. “ Havannah,”

under the care of Admiral Erskine. She became somewhat of a

celebrity ; her portrait appeared in the illustrated papers, and various

descriptions in the press noted her habits and appearance. An

excellent figure, for example, appeared in the ‘ Illustrated LondQn

News ’ for December 27th, 1851. The bird is shown in a character¬

istic attitude, standing huddled up, the tip of her bill resting on the

iloor ; so excellent is the portraiture that she must have been sketched

from life—no artist drawing from a skin (or from imagination) could

have rendered a pose at once so singular and so truthful. The bird



