BurrER.—Ornithology of New Zealand. 215 . 
characters, and illustrated by twenty-nine coloured figures, many of them 
being life-size. But Mr. Gray’s most valuable contribution to southern 
ornithology is the synopsis which appeared in “The Ibis” of July, 1862, 
in which his former list is reproduced with corrections, the newly recorded. 
species added, and.the list extended by the incorporation of the birds hitherto 
found on Norfolk, Phillip, Middleton’s, Lord Howe’s, Macaulay’s and Nepean 
Islands. This enumeration contains 173 species, of which number 122 are 
noticed as occurring in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. 
The new species and stragglers since discovered* swell the number of 
our known birds to 133; and there is every reason to believe that, as the 
country becomes more thoroughly explored, the list will be considerably 
augmented. 
When we reflect that New Zealand is cut off from the rest of the earth 
by a wide expanse of ocean, we can hardly be surprised that of the number 
stated, only sixty-nine species are, strictly speaking, land birds; yet if we 
take the aggregate number of our recorded birds, including a few that only 
appear at remote intervals as stragglers, we find that for the extent of 
country the list is a comparatively large one, being about one-fourth of the 
total number found in Europe. 
But the ornithology of New Zealand, if not very important numerically, 
possesses many peculiar features of considerable interest to the general 
zoologist. 
The former existence. in these islands of a race of giant wingless birds 
not only constitutes a most important fact in natural history, but tends to 
enhance greatly the interest of the existing avifauna, which is found to 
contain diminutive types of some of the extinct colossal forms. Like the 
dodo of the Mauritius, the moa and its kindred have passed away almost 
within the memory of man, and till very recently it was generally believed 
that some of the smaller species still existed in the remote and unexplored 
parts of the country. Of their former existence in great numbers we have 
ample evidence in the traditions of the Maoris and in the abundance of their 
fossil remains. It appears that when the Maori ancestors first settled in 
these islands, about five hundred years ago, they found them tenanted by a 
* The author has communicated to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury notices of 
ps following species, viz. :—Strix haastii, Gerygone assimilis, Mimus carunculatus, Creadion 
, Nycticorax caledonicus, Rallus featherstonii, Nesonetta aucklandica, and Lestris 
large and valuable colleetion of New Zealand birds formed by Dr. Hector, and now de- 
posited in the Provincial Museum at Dunedin, there is a fine specimen of this Lestris, 
beside many other rare and interesting birds, all of which have been collected in the Province 
of Otago. A list of the birds in this interesting collection has been propana for the 
catalogue of the New Zealand Exhibition by the author of this essay. 
