Buller. — On the Occurrence of Plotus novse-hollandiae in N.Z. 217 



Art, XXVII. — On the Occurrence of Plotus novse-hollandue in New 



Zealand. By Walter L. Buller, D.Sc., F.L.S., etc. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 15th October, 1874.] 



The Canterbury Museum contains a roughly prepared skin of the Australian 

 Darter {Plotus novce-hollandice) obtained under circumstances which leave no 

 doubt on my mind of the occurrence of this bird as a straggler in New- 

 Zealand. 



Mr. R B. Fuller, the excellent taxidermist attached to the Museum, 

 during a visit to Hokitika in January last, found the skin stretched flat and 

 •nailed up inside an old shed. He brought it away, but could get no 

 information as to how it came there. An examination of the skin shows 

 clearly that it was in a fresh state when affixed to the wall, the edges having, 

 in the process of drying, shrunk away from the nails on both sides. 



It would seem that some digger or working settler, probably attracted by 

 the rarity of the bird, had adopted this rude mode of preserving it. At any 

 rate the skinning operation appears to have been performed by unskilful 

 hands, an open slit having been made from the hind part of the head right 

 down the back to the root of the tail. 



The suggestion will occur that the bird may have come down from 

 Australia in some vessel ; but the condition of the tail-feathers, which to the 

 very tips are clean and unbroken, proves, I think, that this was no cagecl 

 bird. Those who have kept birds of this class in captivity know how soon 

 the tail-feathers in particular get soiled and abraded. The almost entire 

 absence of fat on the inner surface of the skin would seem to indicate that the 

 bird had performed a long journey on the wing j although this may be other- 

 wise accounted for on the supposition of its being a female in breeding 

 condition. The plumage of this specimen, of which a description is given 

 below, allows of its being either an adult female or a young bird of the first 

 year, at which stage the sexes are alike. 



I may here mention that Dr. Haast, during his exploration of the Southern 

 Alps in the summer of 1862, met with a bird in the Ohau Lake, swimming 

 very low in the water, which he was unable at the time to identify, and that 

 he is now convinced it was a Plotus. 



The habitat of Plotus novcz-hollandice, according to Gould, is confined to 

 the colonies of South Australia and New South Wales, where it is thinly 

 but generally dispersed in all situations suitable to its habits, such as the 

 upper parts of armlets of the sea, the rivers of the interior, extensive water- 

 holes, and deep lagoons. The male differs from the female in having the 



breast and neck black with an arrow-head mark of white on the throat, and a 



cl 



