Hurron.—On the Geographical Relations of the N.Z. Fauna. 227 
greyish black, with more or less grey on the outer webs near the base, and 
with a rather broad white margin on the outer web and tip; greater wing- 
coverts margined outwardly with white ; tail feathers acutely pointed at the tip, 
the two middle ones brownish grey, laterals brownish black tipped with white, 
the white decreasing inwards ; shafts of the tail-feathers greyish black above 
and pure white below ; bill (dry) brownish black, paler at the base ; legs and 
feet (dry) black. 
MEASUREMENT IN INCHES. 
G. concinnus, G. melanops, 
(New Zealand). (Australia), 
2 examples. 
Wing... ae ee a 8 
Zs Ean oe isk E 7 6:5 
Tarsus e ies i D: 1A 
Hind toe e ee es 8 8 
Middle toe ie a o 1-1 11 
Bill—Culmen ... S oa 85 B0- 
» Breadth at nostrils ... oa “4 5 
» Height at nostrils ... 35 “46 
This bird was shot on or about the Sth Api 1870, in an apple tree near 
Invercargill, Southland. 
Nore.—Since reading this paper Mr. Mantell has informed me that he 
saw this bird many years ago at Port Chalmers, in Otago; Mr. W. Travers 
says that he has seen it in Nelson, and Capt. Fraser says that he saw it near 
Hawea Lake, in Otago.—F. W. H 
Art. XXVI.—On the Geographical Relations of the New Zealand Fauna. 
By Capt. F. W. Hurroy, C.M.Z.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 4th and 11th September, 1872.] 
I Know of no part of the world that presents such a promising field to the 
student of Nature as New Zealand. Although small in size it contains a 
fauna and flora so peculiar that several naturalists consider it as a separate 
biological province apart from the rest of the world. Isolated from any large 
continental area longer probably than any other portion of the earth, it 
contains the remnant of the population of a continent that existed before the 
Mammalia had overspread the world, and to that has at various times been 
added, principally from Australia, a colonist population which culminated not 
- many hundreds of years ago in the advent of man. New Zealand, therefore, 
presents us with what I may call the elements of a continental fauna, or a 
