3622 The Zoologist — August, 1873. 



habit of regurgitating certain portions of its food may be added as 

 another reason for its new title. 



It is a late breeder apparently, probably deferring family cares 

 till the ripening of certain fruits supplies ample nourishment for 

 the young. The natives of Bruce Bay say that the kaUapo descends 

 the ranges when the tube {Coriaria) is ripe : this is towards the 

 very end of the year. 



The nesting-place is usually a hole ready made, or one which 

 requires but little labour to fit it for use, — such a place is often 

 selected amongst roots or dead logs; sometimes its home is tun- 

 nelled in the ground ; wherever it may be, its condition will scarcely 

 fail to recall the homely proverb about the bird that fouls its. own 

 nest. About a year ago the writer inspected a well-excavated home 

 not far from Okarito ; it was near the top of a low dry terrace beneath 

 huge katas and kimus, whose stately trunks were clothed with 

 semi-pellucid kidney-ferns and Hymenophyllum : there the formal 

 Gleichenia grew sparingly, just above pendulous Aspleniums, and 

 the heavy fronds of Todea superba, that filled the bottom of the 

 gully in one mass of deepest green. The tunnel, six inches iu 

 diameter at its mouth, was scratched out of the side of the terrace; 

 the circumference widened very gradually as the excavation ex- 

 tended, the work ending in a chamber, two feet in height by 

 eighteen inches in width ; the total length of the hole, from the 

 entrance to the back of the nesting-place, was found to measure 

 nine feet. The floor was thickly covered with excremental balls, 

 to the extent of between two and three bucketsful, from which we 

 could not detect any unpleasant odour : the fermentation of this 

 mass of vegetable matter would materially assist in keeping the 

 hole warm during the absence of the old bird. This unclean 

 custom of devoting home to cloaca as a peculiar habit of the 

 kakapo, is well known to the Maories, as a certain contemptuous 

 saying proves. It may be noted that these excremental droppings 

 often measure quite, and sometimes exceed, an inch iu diameter; 

 the biped unplumed, when on fern diet, extrudes fceces of vast 

 size, — a fact painfully experienced by those who have roughed it 

 out on baked fern. 



Three eggs seem to be the usual number to a brood ; these laid 

 with a considerable interval, probably, between each deposit: the 

 breeding-season extends probably through the first three months 

 of the year. We have been supplied with a note of a nest having 



