60 APPENDIX: NO. XLII. 
quantity of food he eats, must be excellent. His droppings are 
liquid, like those of carnivorous birds, and each of them spreads 
perhaps for four or six inches square upon the bricks, the white 
urinous part generally predominating in quantity. Once when I 
saw him mute, he shuffled a little backwards first, as some other 
birds, especially young ones, will do. 
I have on one occasion lately seen him eat worms out of my hand. 
I had advanced them gently to the point of his beak; he seized one, 
and then relaxing the grip of his beak and darting it forwards, and 
now closing it again upon the worm and drawing his head backwards, 
repeating these movements three or four times in rapid succession, 
he moved the morsel up to his mouth, and perhaps with a slight 
shake, such as a dog gives a rat, and then with a gobble-gobble like 
a young Rook only much less loud, and with several snaps of the 
beak fainter than those I have before described, greedily swallowed 
it down. I do not know that there was anything different from the 
ordinary mode of seizing and swallowmg food as practised by long- 
billed birds, ouly the way in which he brought it about reminded 
me of the unconscious promptitude with which a newly-caught Mole 
or Shrew rarely fails to fall upon a worm presented to it. Another 
time, before a number of people, he gave a most ungracious kick 
when a smoot! caterpillar was held to his nose. 
There is, however, much which it is not fair to judge of by day. 
An animal awakened from its sleep might well appear stupid and 
sullen; its eyes might be dazzled, its paces might be unnatural; in 
short, it was most desirable to see him quite unconstrained at his 
proper time for action, for his whole conduct and character might 
then appear different, and then only could his mode of finding his 
food be fully ascertained. I have now twice had the privilege of so 
watching him when he believed himself unobserved. A lamp had 
been suspended for several nights in front of his cage, to accustom 
the Kiwi-kiwi to it, when I had the pleasure of accompanying a 
distinguished member of the Zoological Society ' on a nocturnal visit 
early in February, on which occasion we saw the bird to advantage: 
but I will rather describe what happened at my second lying in wait, 
which took place in the evening of February 28, 1852, and was on 
the whole more successful than the former one. . 
I took my seat in front of the stall as it was becoming dark, having 
a bull’s-eye lantern on the ledge before me, so that 1 could not 
possibly be seen by my quarry. ‘The first sounds procceded from the 
Weka; he had hopped upon the shelf at the back of his cage, and 
remained in the full light of the lamp troubled with a fit of sneezing; 
previously to this, however, he had raised one of his powerful series 
of cries. Not long afterwards my attention was called to rustlings 
in the box of the 4pteryx, which showed that he was on the move, 
and for some time I continued to hear snaps of the beak, from which 
1 concluded that he might be preening his feathers, an operation 
1 (Mr, D. W. Mitchell, then Secretary of the Society.—Ep. ] 
