THE KIWI AND ITS EGGS 



humoured not drove." In harmony with its crepuscu- 

 lar and nocturnal life the kiwi is coloured of sad browns 

 and greys, a mode of coloration which we meet with 

 in owls and goatsuckers, equally nocturnal as a rule in 

 habit. The name apteryx is quite a misnomer. The 

 kiwi has wings, though they are very minute and hidden 

 by its long feathers ; these lack the firmness of the 

 feathers of other birds by reason of the fact that the 

 branches of the main axis of the feather, the barbs, 

 lack those secondary branches hooked together called 

 the barbules. The bones of the wing are, however, 

 like those of other birds, save for the fact that only one 

 of the three fingers found in the wings of other birds 

 is at all well developed. The long bill of the kiwi and 

 its relationship, as it is thought, to the ostriches, has 

 led to the apt German vernacular name of " Schnepfe- 

 strauss," or " snipe ostrich," an appellation which is 

 clearly more descriptive than apteryx. It is this long 

 bill which is used in probing for earthworms, and it has, 

 contrary to what is found in other birds, the two nostrils 

 situated quite at the end. This allows the bird to 

 snuff down into the hole it is probing for the earth- 

 worm, and it appears indeed that the kiwi has a better 

 sense of smell than most birds. Smell, indeed, is a sense 

 in which birds generally are apt to be deficient ; they 

 make up for it by extreme keenness of vision. The 

 apteryx is one of those birds, and here it agrees with 

 other ostrich-like birds, in which the female is the 

 more agressive of the sexes, while the male is more re- 

 tiring and attends to the duties of incubation. The 

 nest is a scooped out hole in the ground and in it are 

 deposited, or rather is deposited, the enormous egg. 

 It is a fact that proportionately the egg of the apteryx 

 is the largest known, being not even exceeded by that 

 of the roc or Aepyornis, or, more paradoxically, by the 

 smallest egg in actuality in the bird series, i.e. that of 



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