16 BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND. 



avoid threads stretched across it. This faculty he attributed to some highly 

 developed sense of touch possessed by the wing. Dr. Schbbl has repeated 

 these experiments ; but for the putting-out of the eyes he has substituted the 

 less painful method of covering them with sticking-plaster. He has kept 

 Bats thus treated for a year alive in his room, and has entirely confirmed 

 Spallanzani's results. To account for these phenomena, the wings of Bats 

 have been examined for peculiar nerve-endings by Cuvier, Leydig, and 

 Krause, but without any success. The author's discoveries are therefore 

 quite new to science." I cannot give at length Dr. Schobl's proofs that the 

 sense of touch is obtained " through hairs, the bulbs of which widen out and 

 enclose certain organs (the ' Tastkorperchen '), one of which is connected with 

 each hair," but must refer the reader to the original. After the above, the 

 numerous long hairs of the Apteryx are quite understood. Mr. Potts says 

 ('Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' 1872, vol. v. p. 192), "It is 

 probable that, as in the case of Struthious birds, the gizzard-stones are 

 disgorged ; but we have no evidence thereof ; it would be most interesting to 

 ascertain if such regurgitation takes place." That the extinct Dinornithidas 

 swallowed stones is well known to the New-Zealand naturalists. These 

 pebbles are seen in little heaps by the side of the bones ; such a lot found 

 together, and therefore, we may suppose, belonging to one bird, I have in my 

 possession, by the favour of Dr. Haast, who sent them, at my request, to me 

 direct. They are beautifully polished, pretty, and fifty in number, and vary 

 in magnitude — the largest being one inch and three eighths long by three 

 quarters of an inch wide and in weight half an ounce, and the smallest 

 the size of a pea. I have the contents of the gizzards of various birds, 

 notably of the King Penguin (Aptenodijtes pennantii), through the kindness of 

 Mr. Bond ; but I must reserve my observations on this subject, and will only 

 remark that the Struthionidse sometimes pick up, when stones are not at 

 hand, various deleterious substances — for instance, the unfortunate Ostrich 

 who died at the Zoological Gardens from the effects of the copper pence so 

 cruelly given by the unthinking visitors, who, if they had witnessed the 



