472 KAGU 
them an affinity to Eurypyga (SUN-BITTERN), and in due time 
anatomical investigation shewed him to be right. The Kagu, 
however, would not strike the ordinary observer as having much 
outward resemblance to the Sun-Bittern, of which it has neither 
the figure nor posture. It is rather a long-legged bird, about as 
large as an ordinary Fowl, walking quickly and then standing 
almost motionless, with bright red bill and legs, large eyes, a full 
pendent crest, and is generally of a light slate-colour, paler beneath, 
and obscurely barred on its longer wing-coverts and tail with a 
darker shade. It is only when it spreads its wings that these are 
seen to be marked and spotted with white, rust-colour, and black, 
somewhat after the pattern of those of the Sun-Bittern. Like that 
bird too, the Kagu will, in moments of excitement, give up its 
ordinary placid behaviour and execute a variety of violent gesticu- 
lations, some of them even of a more extraordinary kind, for it will 
dance round, holding by the bill the tip of its tail or of one of its 
wings in a way that no other bird is known to do. Its habits in 
its own country were described at some length in 1863 by M. 
Jouan (Mém. Soc. Sc. Nat. Cherbourg, ix. pp. 97 and 235), and in 
1870 by M. Marie (Actes Soc. Linn. Bordeaux, xxvii. pp. 323-326), 
the last of whom predicts the speedy extinction of this interesting 
form, a fate foreboded also by the statement of Messrs. Layard 
(Ibis, 1882, pp. 534, 585) that it has nearly disappeared from the 
neighbourhood of the more settled and inhabited parts. 
