WA AA T 
Burer, —Additions to List of Species, and Notices of Rare Occurrences, 868 
Limnocrcrvs AcvurATUS, Horsf.; Jard. and Selb, I.O., pl. 91. 
Several specimens in Canterbury Museum. 
PLATALEA REGIA, Gould, Proc. Zool. Soc., part V., p. 106. 
The first authentic record of the occurrence of this fine Australian bird 
in New Zealand is contained in my paper on the subject, read before the 
Wellington Philosophical Society in July, 1876 (Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. IX., 
P. 887) based on a specimen obtained at Manawatu, forwarded to me by 
Mr. C. Hulke, and subsequently presented by myself to the Colonial 
Museum, 
? Mznavs avsrRALIS, Hombr. and Jacq., Ann. des Sci. Nat., 1841, p. 820. 
In the communication already noticed, Baron von Hügel writes :—'* I 
procured a pair of Mergansers with a few other skins in Invercargill, from a 
man who had just returned from a surveying trip to the Auckland Islands. 
He had not even turned the skin after taking it off the body ; but as soon as 
Isaw the back through the opening, and felt the beak through the skin of 
the neck, I knew what I had. * * * * 1 have compared this Mergus 
with the original description of Mergus australis, in the voyage of the 
* Astrolabe’; from it I find that either the description is a very poor one, or 
my two birds must belong to a new species. But what agrees well, and made 
me first think they were an immature pair of birds, is the lower surface 
Se 
of the body, which, instead of being white as in M. serrator, is of a dull 
slaty grey, variegated with white bands (the feathers being edged with 
white). The whole plumage is very dark, approaching black on the back, 
the crest well formed, and the size, I fancy, considerably smaller than the 
British red-breasted Merganser ( M. serrator). From the great difference in 
size and brightness of colouring in bill and feet, I deem them to be male and 
female; but in plumage there is little difference. The birds were killed the 
latter end of Noveniber last, and I procured them on the 27th of the follow- 
ing month." 
STERCORARIUS ANTARCTICUS, Gray, Gen. of Birds, III., p. 653. 
A living example in my possession, obtained at Waikanae, in the North 
Island. (See Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. X., p. 207.) 
STERCORARIUS parasiticus, Buller, Birds of New Zealand, p. 268. 
Three more examples have been obtained since the capture mentioned 
in my work. 
Diomepea cauta, Gould, Proc. Zool. Soc., Part VIIL., p. 177. 
Prof. Hutton added this bird to the New Zealand avifauna, on the 
authority of a specimen captured at Blueskin Bay, in Otago, and in last 
year’s volume of Transactions, I described very fully an adult female, taken 
on the beach near the Wellington Pilot Station, and brought to me alive, 
