APTERYX OWENII juv. 



(Lesser Grey Kiwi.) 



Mr. Leadbeater appears to have been the first who did any thing respecting 

 the neossology of this Apteryx ; he exhibited the young of the bird at the 

 Zoological Society's Meeting, January 12, 1864. The chick of which the 

 present illustration is a faithful likeness was brought over to me in 1874, and 

 came from the Ohono peaks near Greenstone Creek, Feramakou river ; a 

 second example, a trifle larger, was from the western slopes of Mount Cook, 

 renowned for its glaciers, "whose snowy peak rises 13,200 feet above the 

 sea, and is visible in clear weather at a distance of more than one hundred 

 miles to the mariner approaching New Zealand" (Sir George Bowen, in 

 Trollope's ' Australia and New Zealand '). The first could hardly have left 

 the shell very long ; and I have a series of eight, ascending like the steps of 

 a ladder from this to the adult, figured by Mr. Keulemans, and placed next 

 to Apteryx haastii ("as A. haastii is the nearest affine of A. owenii), in order that 

 the reader may see for himself, as well as lithography can give it, the marked 

 diiference between the two forms. The two illustrations thus afford the 

 extremes of the chain. 



Mr. Potts says ('Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' vol. v. 

 p. 187), "The young are well clothed when they leave the shell; with 

 them the bill is not curved." This relates to the young of Apteryx australis ; 



