14 BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND. 



touch an object with the point of its bill, whether in the act of feeding or of 

 surveying the ground ; and when shut up in a cage or confined in a room it 

 may be heard, all through the night, tapping softly at the walls. The sniffing 

 sound to which I have referred is heard only when the Kiwi is in the act of 

 feeding or hunting for food ; but I have sometimes observed the bird 

 touching the ground close to or immediately round a worm which it had 

 dropped without being able to find it. I have remarked, moreover, that 

 the Kiwi will pick up a worm or piece of meat as readily from the bottom of 

 a vessel filled with Avater as from the ground, never seizing it, however, till 

 it has first touched it with its bill in the manner described. It is probable 

 that, in addition to a highly developed olfactory power, there is a delicate 

 nervous sensitiveness in the terminal enlargement of the upper mandible." 



Professor Owen, in the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society,' vol. ii. 

 p. 287, observes : — " The relations of the modifications of the skull of the 

 Apteryx " (southern) " to its peculiar habits and kind of food are well 



marked and very easily traced ; the anchylosed condition of all the 



parts concerned in the fol'mation of the upper mandible is more complete 

 than in the larger Struthionidas, and relates to the greater force with which 

 the beak is used in obtaining food. The nocturnal habits, combined with 

 the necessity for a highly developed organ of smell, which chiefly com- 

 pensates for the low condition of the organ of vision, produce the most 

 singular modifications which the skull presents ; and we may say that those 

 cavities which, in other birds, are devoted to the lodgement of the eyes, are 

 here almost exclusively occupied by the nose. The spinal column is relatively 

 stronger, especially in the cervical region, than in the larger Struthionidae." 



Mr. Yarrell, in the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society,' vol. i. p. 72, 

 in his article on Apteryx australis, makes the following observations : — The 

 beak has " the upper mandible grooved on each outer side, near the margin, 

 throughout its whole length ; at the end of this groove, on each side, the 

 nostrils are pierced, the apertures elongated and covered by a membrane, so 

 suspended on the outside of each of them like a valve, that the slightest 



