APPENDIX. 



547 



mouth. The Maories told me the Kakapo was a very valiant 

 bird, and often fought successfully with their dogs ; but my 

 dog, though punished at times, never had a serious battle 



with one of them It has been said that the Kakapo 



lives in flocks, but I have never found more than one bird in 

 a hole, though very frequently I have observed a second hole 

 about thirty or forty yards distant, the bird in which was 

 generally of a different sex from the first. It appears to me, 

 therefore, that the birds Kve singly, but at night go together 

 in pairs for the double purpose of feeding and reproduction. 

 When the female roams about with her young she utters a 

 peculiar call, more resembling the grunting of a pig than 

 anything else. 



" In former years the Marnia plains were a celebrated 

 hunting-ground of the Maories for this bird. They generally 

 went there on fine moonUght nights when the berries of the 

 Tertu (Coriaria sarmentosa), a favourite food of the bird, 

 were ripe, and ran them down partly with dogs, or even killed 

 them with long sticks upon the Tertu bushes. Another mode 

 was when they had found their holes to introduce a long 

 stick to which they had fastened several strong flax snares ; 

 feeling the bird with the end of it, they twisted the stick 

 until some part of the bird was caught in the snares, and thus 

 drew it out. The cry of the Kakapo, heard during the night, 

 very much resembles the gobble of the Turkey." 



The following is Mr. G. R. Gray's description of this 

 remarkable species : — 



"Upper surface sap-green, with a verdigris tinge on the 

 wings ; each feather marked in the middle with yellow, which 

 is margined on the sides with black, from which spring irre- 

 gular transverse bands of the same colour ; the outer webs of 

 the greater wing-coverts, quills, secondaries, and entire tail 

 brownish buff, irregularly banded transversely with black; 

 between every alternate set lemon-yellow ; the inner webs of 

 quills and secondaries black, more or less transversely banded 



2 N 2 



