3086 Tue ZooLtocist—JuNrF, 1872. 
é 
the bird very highly for its tail-feathers (which are used as a badge of 
mourning), state that, unlike other species which have of late years 
diminished and become more confined in their range, the huia was, from 
time immemorial, limited in its distribution to the district I have 
indicated. 
«My first specimen of this singular bird (an adult female) was obtained 
in 1855, from the Wainuiomata Hills, a continuation of the Rimutaka 
Range, bounding the Wellington Harbour on the northern side,—the same 
locality from which Dr. Dieffenbach, uearly twenty years before, received 
the examples figured by Mr. Gould in his magnificent work on the Birds 
of Australia. I have since obtained many fine specimens, and in the 
summer of 1864 I succeeded in getting a pair of live ones. They were 
caught by a native in the ranges, and brought down to Manawatu, a distance 
of more than fifty miles, on horseback. The owner refused to take money 
for them, but I negotiated an exchange for a valuable greenstone. I kept 
these birds for more than a year, waiting a favourable opportunity of for- 
warding them to the Zoological Society of London. 
* a * * * # 2 * 
“ For some days they refused to eat anything but huhu, but by degrees 
they yielded to a change of food, and at length would eat cooked potato, 
boiled rice, and raw meat minced up in small pieces. They were kept 
supplied with a dish of fresh water, but seldom washed themselves, although 
often repairing to the vessel to drink. Their ordinary call was a soft and 
clear whistle, at first prolonged, then short and quickly repeated, both birds 
joining in it. When excited or hungry they raised their whistling note to 
a high pitch; at other times it was softly modulated, with variations, or 
changed into a low chuckling note. 
= = * * * * oo * * 
“ But what interested me most of all was the manner in which the birds 
assisted each other in their search for food, because it appeared to explain 
the use, in the economy of nature, of the differently formed bills in the two 
sexes. To divert the birds I introduced a log of decayed wood infested with 
the huhu grub.. They at once attacked it, carefully probing the softer parts 
with their bills, and then vigorously assailing them, scooping out the 
decayed wood till the larva or pupa was visible, when it was carefully drawn 
from its cell, treated in the way described above, and then swallowed. The 
very different development of the mandibles in the two sexes enabled them 
to perform separate offices. The male always attacked the more decayed 
portions of the wood, chiselling out his prey after the manner of some 
woodpeckers, while the female probed with her long pliant bill the other 
cells, where the hardness of the surrounding parts resisted the chisel of her 
mate. Sometimes I observed the male remove the decayed portion without 
being able to reach the grub, when the female would at once come to his 
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