Birds. 9199 
But to return again from the dry ossiferous remains to the living 
bird. The discovery by Walter Mantell, in 1850, of a live Notornis, 
of which the generic characters had long before been determined by 
Prof. Owen from an examination of the Waiugougoro fossils, while it 
proved the soundness of the Professor’s physiological inferences, 
established at the same time the fact that the Waiugougoro collection 
represented the living as well as the dead. Dr. Mantell speculated a 
good deal on his son having secured to Science “the last of a dying 
race,” but another live Notornis was afterwards taken, and the skin is 
now in the British Museum. 
Again, the smaller representatives of the tribe,—the Apteryx, of 
which there are at least three existing species (A. australis, A. Owenii 
and A. Mantelli); the woodhen (Rallus. australis), which is the true 
type of the Brachypteryx; the Porphyrio and the small short-winged 
“swamp rails,”—are still comparatively plentiful in the remote parts of 
the country. Apterous birds must of necessity disappear before such 
enemies as the wild dog and cat, and, were there no other cause in 
operation to check its existence, the kiwi would ultimately become 
extinct. A few years hence and an Apteryx will probably be as great 
a rarity as alive Notornis! Nevertheless the kiwi does exist in the 
land now, and that is sufficient for our argument. May not Palapteryx, 
Brachypteryx and Aptornis, all or some of them, still inhabit the 
unfrequented parts of the interior? I think we have some evidence 
presumptive of the fact :— 
1. Mr. Mantell tells me that Watts Russell, in his West-coast journey 
in the Nelson Province, a few years ago, killed and innocently ate (!) 
a bird which he described as resembling a Rhea or cassowary. Was 
it not a Palapteryx? 
2. The Middle Island natives speak positively of a huge wood-hen, 
which they call “‘takahe,” as still frequenting the broken mountainous 
country at the extreme south. May not this be a Brachypteryx ? 
3. Sir George Grey, when he was last here, told me that Tamati 
Waaka had gravely assured him that a “moa,” standing about four 
feet high, was still occasionally met with in the wooded country near 
the Bay of Islands. When the Governor affected to doubt his word, 
the old man got angry, and said he would prove it by bringing one, 
some day, to Government House ! 
4, Mr. Rochfort, the Provincial Surveyor of Nelson, describes (in 
the ‘ Nelson Examiner,’ August 24, 1859) a bird which he had seen in 
the Paparoa Elevation as “a kiwi, about the size of a turkey, having 
spurs on his feet, which, when attacked by a dog, defends himself so 
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