ESSAY 



ON THE 



ORNITHOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND, 



By WALTEE BULLER, E.L.S. 



[Written for the Neio Zealand Exhibition, 1865.] 



Scientific researches in all jjarts of the world have tended to confirm and 

 establish the fact that, in every department of natural history, different 

 parts of the earth's surface are endowed with peculiar types of organization, — 

 that different regions are tenanted by totally distinct tribes of animals and 

 plants, while their subordinate divisions are characterized by many exclusive 

 genera and by numerous forms of species. 



The primary causes which have led to this geographic dispersion of 

 species, and the laws which at present control and regulate it, are and 

 ever must be subjects of vague speculation ; but it is a remarkable and 

 suggestive fact, that the five great natural divisions of our globe are not 

 only inhabited by different varieties of mankind, but differ so widely from 

 each other in the character of their animal productions, that they may be 

 regarded as so many separate zoological regions or provinces, each embracing 

 many distinct faunas, but nevertheless characterized by strong distinguishing 

 features. 



Birds, frora their very nature, might be supposed to be in some measure 

 exempt from the operation of this geographic law. When we consider that 

 they are extremely volatile beings, eminently endowed with the power of 

 locomotion, and migratory in their nature — that the swallow speeds through 

 the air at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and that many of the smaller birds 

 perform every season a distance of several thousand miles — we might fairly 

 conclude that birds, of all animals, are unconfined in their range, and will be 

 found to spread into every region calculated to afford them congenial food 

 and climate. 



This, however, is far from being the order of nature. " The arrowy 

 course of the swallow, the wanderings of the albatros, or the soaring of 



