ROOM II. DISCOVERY OF A LIVE NOTORXIS. 127 



colour, black ; said to be a wingless bird as large as a fowl, 

 with red beak and legs ; it is nearly exterminated by the cats : 

 its cry was Keo ! keo ! " The vagueness and inaccuracy of 

 the description prove it to be derived from report, and not 

 from actual observation. On my son's second visit to the 

 southern part of the Middle Island (as Government Com- 

 missioner for the settlement of native claims), he fell in with 

 some sealers, who had been pursuing their avocations along 

 the little frequented islets and gullies of Dusky Bay, on the 

 south-western shores, and from them obtained the skin of a 

 recent specimen of Notornis Mantelli. 



It appeared, that when frequenting the coasts in search of 

 seals and other game, these men observed on the snow, with 

 which the ground was then thickly covered, the foot-tracks of 

 a large and strange bird, and after following the trail for a 

 considerable distance, they caught sight of the object of their 

 search, which ran with great speed, and for a long while 

 distanced their dogs, but was at length driven up a gully in 

 Resolution Island, and captured alive. It uttered loud screams, 

 and fought and struggled violently : it was kept ah' ve three 

 or four days on board the schooner, and then killed, and the 

 body roasted and eaten by the crew, each partaking of the 

 dainty, which was said to be delicious. The skin, with the 

 skull and bones of the feet and legs, was preserved, and for- 

 tunately obtained by my son while in good condition, and 

 thus, perhaps, the last of the race of Mohos was preserved 

 for the naturalists of Europe. 



Upon comparing the head of the bird with the fossil 

 crania and mandibles, my son was at once convinced of 

 the specific identity of the recent and fossil specimens ; and so 

 delighted was he by the discovery of a living example of one 

 of the supposed extinct contemporaries of the Moa, that he 

 wrote to me and stated that the skull and beaks were alike 

 in both, and that the abbreviated and feeble development of 

 the bones and plumage of the wing were in perfect accordance 

 with the indications afforded by the humerus and sternum 

 found by him at Waingongoro, and now in the British 

 Museum, as pointed out in the Zoological Transactions, 

 vol. iii. To the natives of the pahs or villages my son 

 visited on his homewanj route to Wellington, the Notornis 

 was a perfect novelty, and excited great interest. No one 



