
“ NOTES ON SOME RARE BIRDS IN THE LORD DERBY MUSEUM. 63 
pool during the first two decades of the XIXth Century. In 1819 this 
collection was disposed of by auction, at which 
“ Lot 60, White Gallinule (F [ulica] alba) ; New Zealand, rare ; brought by 
Sir J. Banks,” 
was disposed of, on the 27th May, to Lord Stanley for £3 3s. With the 
Knowsley collection, therefore, it was bequeathed by the purchaser, as XIIIth 
Lord Derby, to the citizens of Liverpool, and was finally handed over by the 
XIVth Earl to the Free Public Museums, where it has now rested for nearly 
fifty of the 130 years that have elapsed since it was captured. Unlike 
most of the birds brought home by Captain Cook it was not mummified ; 
but came into the Knowsley Collection stuffed, and mounted in the ordinary 
way, but with little credit to the taxidermist. 
A few weeks ago it became necessary to submit the specimen to careful 
examination, as from the lapse of years some signs of what appeared to be 
deterioration in the limbs and neck were becoming apparent. In the course 
of this examination conducted with, it is needless to say (when dealing with 
so rare a specimen), the utmost care, it was a great satisfaction to find that 
the skin, though so old, instead of being “never in a good condition,” as 
Mr. Rowley has stated in his notice of the bird in his Ornithological 
Miscellany of 1875 (p. 37), was in an excellent state of preservation. Under 
these circumstances I ventured to have the skin partially relaxed for the 
purpose I had in view, when to my great surprise it became apparent that 
the whole of the neck (along with a very small piece on the top of the head) 
was made up with feathers glued to the skin. On discovering this I had the 
bird entirely relaxed and dismounted, but found no other part of the skin 
tampered with. The false body proved to be solidly made of straw 
and tow, the work, almost certainly, of the same taxidermist who had 
mounted many of the birds in the Lord Derby collection which had come 
from Bullock’s Museum. It seems therefore not improbable that the bird 
may have been re-made after it came into Bullock’s possession, or, at all 
events, subsequent to 1790, for it is evident that its pose was modelled from 
the Plate of the ‘ White Gallinule’ drawn by Miss Stone for White’s Journal 
of « Voyage to New South Wales, which was published in London in that year. 
With the exception of the portions mentioned above the whole of the plumage 
belonged to the skin, and was in a sound condition. The two humeri were 
gone ; but the ulna and radius of both sides were present, and attached to 
the ulna of one side was a small fragment, representing the condyles of the 
humerus. These bones I have had removed for measurement. Nearly the 
whole of the neck is denuded of plumage, undoubtedly caused by the ravages 
of moth (which had slightly attacked the underside of the wings also), for 
the bases of the feathers still remain each in its papilla, and the denudation 
was not, therefore, as it seemed at first sight, due to slipping of the skin on 
account of decomposition while the bird was in the flesh. The attached 
feathers consequently could never have belonged to it, for, besides being 
themselves perfectly complete, they are of a different character from those 
remaining on the neck, and belonged evidently to quite a different species of 
bird. The removal of these adventitious feathers gives our Rail a very 
different appearance from what it had before. 
The species to which this bird belongs has been the subject of considerable 
discussion. Lord Stanley purchased it as a ‘ White Gallinule (Ff. alba).’ 
Professor Newton surmised it to be a second species of that ‘ White 
Gallinule’ brought home by Surgeon-General White from Norfolk Island, 
and figured in 1790 in the Journal of his voyage, a species which is supposed 
to have also inhabited Lord Howe’s Island, and to be now entirely extinct in 
both those localities. White’s specimen was given to the Museum of Sir 
