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Fossil and Recent Birds of New Zealand. 103 
This beautiful bird is about two feet high, and much resembles 
in its general form the Porphyrio melanotus, but is generically dis- 
tinct ; the characters predicated by Professor Owen from the fossil 
skull and bones, being well exhibited in this recent example. 
The beak is short and strong, and was, as well as the legs, 
when this animal was alive, of a bright red’color. The neck and 
body are of a dark purple, the wings and back being shot with 
green and gold. The wings are short and rounded, and remark- 
ably feeble, both in structure and plumage. The tail is very 
scanty, and white beneath. Mr. Gould, an eminent ornithologist, 
(author of the Birds of Australia, &c.), to whom I have given 
the privilege of figuring and describing it, as a tribute of respect 
for his indefatigable and beautiful researches in that department 
of natural history, confirms the opinion that it is identical with 
the fossil: this, then, isa recent example of the Notornis Mantelli, 
a bird coéval with those marvelous bipeds—those giants of their 
class—whose stupendous proportions and mighty strength are 
celebrated in the songs and traditional tales of the New Zealand- 
ers, and whose bones and even eggs have been transmitted to 
Europe, and excited the wonder and delight of the philosophers 
and the multitude. 
na letter announcing this discovery, my son writes, that he 
had sent me both recent and fossil specimens of “ a genus of bird 
hitherto unknown to naturalists,” and though he had not found 
“a live Moa, he had at least found a living contemporary.” It is 
possible that another specimen of Moho may be caught, sooner or 
later, yet from all I can gather from persons who have long resided 
in various parts of the New Zealand Islands, there is greater proba- 
bility that this may be the last ever seen alive. My son also sent 
me other fine skins; one of that marvelous New Zealand bird, 
the Strigops—which blends the characters of the owl and parrot, 
the last is of great rarity ; I believe this is but the third specimen 
sent to England. I shall let the British Mriseum have it, as there 
_ 48ho example of this species in our national collections. ‘The 
Notornis and the other birds I shall retain. 
as about to depart ‘once more for the bone-beds on 
shores of the North Island, and with the especial 
ing certain caverns in the limestone rocks of that 
two of Neomorpha, and one of Apteryr australis, and Ap. Oweni: 
