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219 



this rather barren-looking stretch of country. When any of these stones are disturbed from their 

 bed, who can have failed to notice the commotion produced amongst the insect community thus 

 suddenly disclosed to view ] What scuttling ensues to gain fresh concealment from the garish 

 light of day ! In a somewhat similar manner, after a stream has deserted its temporary bed, nume- 

 ro'us forms of aquatic insect life, attracted in all probability by the moisture, are to be found in 

 the sand in which the shingle lies half embedded. The horny point of the bill of this bird, from 

 its peculiar form, is sufficiently strong to be used for thrusting between and under stones and 

 pebbles. The flexibility of the upper mandible derived from the long grooves and flattened form 

 (extending to nearly half its length) tends materially to assist the bird in fitting its curved bill 

 close to a stone, and thus aids it in searching or fossicking around or beneath the shingle for its 

 food, while at the same time the closed mandibles would form a tube through which water and 

 insects could be drawn up, as water is sucked up by a syringe. As the flexure of the bill is 

 lateral, the bird is enabled to follow up retreating insects by making the circuit of a water 

 worn stone with far greater ease than if it had been furnished with the straight beak of the 

 Plover, or the long flexible scoop of the Avocet. The inspection of these specimens must 

 clear away any little cloud of doubt that might remain on the minds of persons unfamiliar 

 with the bird, and convince them that this singular form of bill, so far from being an acci- 

 dental deformity, is a beautiful provision of nature, which confers on a Plover-like bird the 

 advantage of being able to secure a share of its food from sources whence it would be otherwise 



unattainable." 



There are three eggs of this species in the Canterbury Museum, all exactly alike both in 

 form and colouring. They are broadly ovoido-conical, or slightly pyriform, measuring 1-35 inch 

 in length by 1-05 in breadth, and of a delicate greenish stone-grey, freckled over their entire 



■ 



surface with purplish brown. 



As already explained, the curvature in the bill is congenital, being equally present in the 

 embryo chick, although not so fully developed ; and this fact furnishes a beautiful illustration of 

 the law of adaptation and design that prevails throughout the whole animal kingdom. A bird 

 endowed with a straight bill, or with an upcurved or decurved one, would be less fitted for the 

 peculiar mode of hunting by which the Anarliynchits obtains its living, as must be at once apparent 

 to any one who has watched this bird running rapidly round the boulders that lie on the surface 

 of the ground and inserting its scoop sidewise at every step, in order to collect the insects and 

 their larvae that find concealment there. But there is another feature in the natural history of 

 this species that is deserving of special notice. As already described, the fully adult bird is 

 adorned with a black pectoral band, which, in the male, measures '75 of an inch in its widest 

 part. Now it is a very curious circumstance that this band is far more conspicuous on the right 

 hand side, where, owing to the bird's peculiar habit of feeding, there is less necessity for conceal- 

 ment by means of protective colouring. This character is constant in all the specimens that I 

 have examined, although in a variable degree, the black band being generally about one third 

 narrower and of a less decided colour on the left side of the breast, from which we may, I think, 

 reasonably infer that the law of natural selection has operated to lessen the colouring on the 

 side of the bird more exposed to Hawks and other enemies whilst the Anarhynchits is hunting 



