25 



been seen at the Bealey Police Station (in the Southern Alps), and that it sometimes utters a note 

 " something like that of the Morepork, but just as if he had his mouth full." 



Nothing is at present known of the nesting-habits of the Laughing-Owl ; and we can only 

 hope that Mr. Potts may succeed in finding and describing the eggs before the hand of man shall 

 have finally obliterated this fast-expiring species. 



The two forms of Strigidce described above are the only ones inhabiting New Zealand of 

 which we have, as yet, any positive knowledge. But the natives are acquainted with another 

 species, which they describe as being very diminutive in size and strictly arboreal in its habits. This 

 is no doubt the bird indicated by Ellman as Strix parvissima (Zoologist, 1861). Mr. J. D. 

 Enys informed me that he once captured an Owl " standing only five inches high," and that it was 

 perfectly tame and gentle. Mr. Potts, in a communication to the Wellington Philosophical 

 Society*, records, on hearsay evidence, several instances of the occurrence in Canterbury of an 

 Owl " about the size of a Kingfisher." This bird may prove to be the same as Bonaparte's Scops 

 novce zealandice, as suggested by Dr. Finsch ; but, till it has been more accurately determined, it 

 is impossible to give it a place in our list of species. In his notes on my ' Essay,' a transla- 

 tion of which appeared in the 'Journal fiir Ornithologie ' (1867, pp. 305-347), Dr. Finsch 

 includes Strix delicatulus, Gould, among the species occurring in New Zealand ; but although 

 this handsome bird ranges over a great part of the southern hemisphere, I have not known a 

 single instance of its appearance in our country. 



* Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute, vol. iii. p. 68, 1870. 



E 



