The Zoologist— August, 1873. 3623 



been found in the month of March on the banks of the Okavito 

 river; it contained one egg and two young birds: another nest, 

 within the distance of a mile from the first, contained two eggs and 

 one young one : this affords some evidence of the deliberate manner 

 in which the eggs are laid. Current with the natives of the West 

 Coast is a piece of folk-lore that the number of eggs laid by the 

 kakapo is indicated by the fruit of the kie-kie {Freyciiielia Banksii); 

 it is averred the number of eggs to a nest will be found to corre- 

 spond with the number of cobs that may be found in a spike of the 

 trailing kie-kie. 



It is customary with the female to remain with the young whilst 

 the male finds shelter in some convenient nook close by. The 

 sexes show great attachment to each other. A friend informed the 

 writer that in a place where the kakapo was not likely to be found 

 he had killed a female bird : the specimen was carried to his camp, 

 about two miles distant; at night he heard a kakapo, which his dog 

 secured; it proved to be a fine male. This bird he had no doubt 

 was the mate of the female killed in the daytime : he arrived at 

 this conclusion as, from his intimate knowledge of the district, he 

 was perfectly aware it was not kakapo country ; the specimens 

 procured were strangers. 



All those who have kept a bird of this species as a pet agree in 

 testifying to its intelligence and companionableness. 



Much of the interest that attaches to the study of the Natural 

 History of New Zealand is bred perhaps from the contemplation 

 of forms that are now strange to the world of science, and men wax 

 eloquent on such apparent anomalies as wingless or brachypterous 

 birds, whose structure leads the reflective naturalist far into the 

 remoteness of the past. Inhabiting fragments of an ancient con- 

 tinent whose history is so entirely lost as to present a void, without 

 the vestige of a tradition for the investigation of the student of our 

 modern cultivation, these curious forms, their conservation through 

 the grand physical changes in their habitat, are in themselves a 

 most entertaining theme for the pondering naturalist. 



It is greatly to be regretted that the peculiar forms that illustrate 

 the fauna of these islands are daily becoming scarcer : the demands 

 of collectors seem to be insatiable. The writer is aware of a whole 

 district from which the Apteryx australis, the rowi of the Maories,has 

 been exterminated. In the north of this island a vast white heronry 

 has been destroyed, or forsaken by the kotuku in consequence 



