Travers.—On Organic Productions of New Zealand. 463 
remains, that whilst the conditions of life under which both birds are 
placed appear to be identical, so great an amount of modification should 
have occurred in one or other of the forms, assuming «either of them to 
retain the ancestral characters. Take next the two species of Turnagra. 
Now, whilst in these we do not find the same marked differences in plumage 
as in Orthonyz, there can nevertheless be no confusion of the two, and yet 
with respect to these birds also, there is absolutely nothing in their habits, 
or modes of life which would enable us to distinguish between them. The 
distinction in the next instance,—that of the two species of Glaucopis, 
—is still less marked, but affords, when we consider their habits 
of life, even a more peculiar case in connection with the question 
of distribution. The North Island bird is a little the more robust 
of the two, and its wattles are unicolor, varying from bright blue 
to purple, whilst the South Island bird has the tail, only, blackish at 
the tip, and its wattles are bicolor, the point of attachment being blue, 
whilst the rest is red or orange. Wattles are what is termed a secondary 
sexual character, and why such a variation as that which appears in 
this case should have taken place, seeing that they are not confined to 
one sex only, is certainly very unaccountable. As in the other cited cases 
the habits of three bird species are absolutely identical, this similitude ex- 
tending so fur, that in each, the bird, when feeding upon the leaf of some 
succulent herb, such as that of the sow-thistle, holds it in its foot after the 
manner of a parrot. 
The differences between the two species of Apteryx peculiar to the South 
Island, and the one peculiar to the North Island, are also well marked, 
whilst we have, in regard to this genus, the singular fact, that the fourth 
and remaining species (Apterye oweni) is common to both habitats. This 
rests, as yet, upon the authority of a single specimen only, alleged to have 
been found in some part of the Tararua Range. The person by whom the 
specimen is said to have been obtained, was engaged in surveys which 
required him to pass some time upon elevated parts of the range, and as he 
had no apparent motive for practising deception in the matter, and was not 
sufficiently conversant with the avi-fauna of these islands to see the full 
significance of his discovery, I am disposed to accept his statement as true 
until some cogent reasons for distrusting it have been brought forward. 
The circumstance that two or three specimens of Stringops habroptilus have 
been found in the Kaimanawa Range, lends, as I think, some colour to 
the probability that Apteryx oweni is still an inhabitant of the North 
Island. | 
The difference between the species of Petroica, and those of Ocydromus 
peculiar to the North Island, and the species of the same genera in the 
