244 Transactions.— Zoology. 
the hind toe, appear to be much blunted by use. The colours of the 
plumage generally are brighter than in the supposed female specimen in 
the British Museum, but they are, I think, less brilliant on the whole than 
in the British Museum male: notably there is an entire absence of the 
well defined terminal margins of verditer green on the wing-coverts which 
form crescentic bands in the type specimen. There are, however, as 
mentioned above, different blending shades of green and blue on the plumage 
of the wings, which impart to it a very beautiful appearance. My recollec- 
tion of the @ specimen in the British Museum collection is that it has these 
crescentic markings far less conspicuous than in the male. 
Note.—There appears to have been originally very little colour in the 
beak except on and below the frontal shield and along the basal edges of 
both mandibles. The legs are in much the same condition as that presented 
by the legs in a dried Pukeko skin, the colours having faded out. But there 
is enough colour left in the tarsi to show that the legs and feet were origin- 
ally, as described above, a light (probably pinkish) red. The skin is much 
stretched by unskilful treatment after being removed from the body; but I 
have allowed for the stretching in taking the measurements given above. 
I remarked to Professor Parker, on first taking up the specimen, that 
the legs appeared to be more attenuated than in the British Museum 
examples, and the measurements which I afterwards made, as given above, _ 
prove that the toes are somewhat longer proportionately to the size of the 
bird, which is altogether slightly larger than the type specimen described in 
my ‘‘ Birds of New Zealand.” The frontal shield is, however, somewhat 
smaller, being just one inch across in its widest part, and ascending barely 
half an inch from the base of the culmen. It has a corrugated, shrivelled 
appearance in the dried specimen, and from the sides of the bill, at its base, 
the cuticle is inclined to peel off. The skin (in the dried state) is very 
tough, having the appearance and consistency of fine leather. 
Hab,—South-west portion of South Island. As already mentioned the 
first recorded specimen (in 1849) was obtained on Resolution Island, the 
second, nearly three years later, on Secretary Island, in Thompson Sound, 
and the third, which has formed the subject of this paper (in December, 
1879), on the eastern side of Te Anau Lake. Taking these three localities 
as marking the points of a triangle describing the ascertained limits of its 
occurrence, we have before us the present range of Notornis over a consider- 
able area of very broken and rugged country. As its fossil remains testify, 
its ancient range was far more extensive, including the North Island, and 
in prehistoric times probably reaching much further. 
ee eS ea i ae 
