530 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



of being absolutely wanting on the Australian continent, though occurring in New 

 Zealand and in several of the Polynesian Islands. A light is thrown upon this sin- 

 gular circumstance by the fact that the New Zealand forms are quite peculiar, and 

 that Madagascar also possesses peculiar sturnine genera. 



One of these remarkable New Zealand starlings is the hula-bird (Ileteralocha 

 acutirostris), as depicted in the accompanying fine cut. It will be well at the outset 

 to assure the reader that the two birds there figured really belong to the same 



FIG. 263. Sturnua vulgaris, European starling ; S. unicolor, Sardinian starling. 



species, being in fact, the one with the straight bill the male, the other the female. 

 Characteristic of both is the wattle at the mouth angle. They occupy now a very 

 limited space in a few densely-wooded mountain ranges, and like the many other 

 abnormal types that is, types diverging greatly from the more modern avian forms 

 they seem to be doomed to an early extinction. The huia was often in the systems- 

 associated with the foregoing family, but an anatomical examination which Garrod 

 was enabled to make on a specimen which died in the London Zoological 



