222 Transactio7is \ — Zoology. 



(as may be seen on reference to the published description)* indicates a 

 transitional condition. The extra length of leg (as compared with //. novce- 

 zealandice) appears to be rather in the tibia than in the tarsus. Mr. Potts 

 makes the black neck and breast his distinguishing feature, but there is 

 another bird in the collection (a male) in which the tarsus is 4 inches, and the 

 tibia 2 inches — altogether a bird of smaller proportions — in which the 

 distribution of colours is the same, although there is a less extent of black 

 on the breast. 



I have already described (I.e., p. 204) the young of this species from two 

 young specimens in the Canterbury Museum, the parentage of which was 

 placed beyond all doubt by Mr. Fuller, who secured at the same time the two 

 old birds in black summer plumage. I may add that these latter are still in 

 the collection ; the male is perfectly black, and the female slightly pied. 



A more matured example of the young bearing the following label, " Shot 

 in Bottle Lake, Jan. 28, 1872; juv.— female ; parent bird black," presents a 

 general resemblance to the young of Ilimantopus leucocephalus, but on a close 

 comparison the following differences are observable : — The crown is lighter, 

 being of an almost uniform ash-grey ; there is more greyish-white between 

 the shoulders, and the tail-feathers instead of being black are ashy-white, the 

 outer ones havine a broad sub-anical mark nf rWlr.mv™- • a-^A +T> Q .^m^ 



wings 



fewer light margins on the wing-coverts ; and the inferior primaries and the 

 secondaries are more largely tipped with white. Some of these differences, 

 howevei*, may be due to the fact that this is a somewhat older bird. In 

 the other specimens, mentioned above, the axillars are black, as in the 

 young of II. leucocephalus. 



The collection contains nine perfectly black specimens. Of these eight are 

 males j and, according to the labels, all of them were killed in summer. Out 

 of twelve other specimens more or less pied with white, only three are females, 

 all of these (of both sexes) being also summer birds. The extent of white, 

 however, varies considerably in birds shot at one and the same time, some 

 exhibiting only a few white feathers on the neck and breast, whilst in others 

 the white predominates. This irregularity of plumage may perhaps be 

 accounted for on the supposition that the birds do not undergo the complete 

 change at their first seasonal moult, but at some later period— say in their 

 second or third year. 



There are two specimens in the collection which are of more than ordinary 

 interest, because they are quite distinct in appearance from either II. leuco- 

 cephalus or H. nova-zealandiai in their full plumage, and cannot, so far as I at 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., Vol. V., p. 19S. 



