438 HUIA 
Heteralocha,! and very remarkable for the sexual difference in the 
bill, which is so great as to have led Gould to describe the male 
and female as distinct species (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1856, pp. 144, 145). 
First referred, like so many other curve-billed birds, to the Upupidx 
(Hoopog), it was placed by Prof, Cabanis in 1850 (Mus. Hein. i. p. 
218) among the Corvidx, but Garrod atter dissection (Proc. Zool. Soc. 
1872, pp. 643-647) found its relation to the Sturnidw (STARLING) 
to be very intimate, and its structure clearly not allied to the 
Corvide, among which, however, Dr. Sharpe included it in 1877 
(Cat. B. Br. Mus. iii. p. 143) though the year before (Voy. ‘ Erebus’ 
and ‘Terror, App. p. 27) he had followed Garrod. Probably the 
Huis, Female and Male. (From Buller.) 
right view, as indicated by Prof. Cabanis’s remarks on this very 
subject (loc. cit.), is that it is an ancient and generalized form, which 
cannot really be assigned to any of the more differentiated 
Families. According to the personal observation of Sir W. Buller, 
who enters at length on the natural history of the Huia (Bb. NV. Zeal. 
ed. 2,1. pp. 7-17), its favourite food is the grub of a timber-boring 
beetle, and the male bird with his short stout bill attacks the more 
decayed portions of the wood, and chisels out his prey, while the 
female with her long slender bill probes the holes in the sounder 
part, the hardness of which resists his weapon ; or, when he, having 
removed the decayed portion, is unable to reach the grub, the female 
comes to his aid and accomplishes what he has failed to do. The 
Huia is entirely a forest-bird, and is doubtless one of those doomed 
to extinction, though at present it seems to maintain its existence. 
Except a white terminal band on the tail, the whole plumage is 
in both sexes black, with a green metallic gloss: the bill is ivory- 
white, and the large rounded wattles at the gape are of a rich orange. 
1 Originally named by Gould Neomorpha, a term which was preoccupied. 
