INTRODUCTION. 



The first published list of the birds of New Zealand was drawn up by the late Mr. G. R. Gray 

 of the British Museum, and appeared in 1843 in the Appendix to ' Dieffenbach's Travels.' This 

 enumeration contained the names of eighty-four recorded species ; but many of these were of 

 doubtful authority, and have since been omitted. In the following year the same industrious 

 ornithologist, in the ' Voyage of H.M.SS. Erebus and Terror,' produced a more complete list, 

 embracing the birds of New Zealand and the neighbouring islands, accompanied by short 

 specific characters, and illustrated by twenty-nine coloured figures, many of them of life-size. In 

 July 1862 he published in ' The Ibis ' a revision of this synopsis, with the newly recorded species 

 added, including, moreover, the birds inhabiting Norfolk, Phillip, Middleton's, Lord Howe's, 

 Macaulay's, and Nepean Islands. This enumeration contained altogether 173 species, of which 

 122 were said to occur in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands. In the 'Essay on the Orni- 

 thology of New Zealand,' written by myself at the request of the Exhibition Commissioners, in 

 1865, and afterwards published by the New-Zealand Institute*, eleven additional species were 

 recorded ; and in a paper which I communicated to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 

 August 1868f , I gave the names of fourteen more. A few other species have since been added 

 to the list ; while, on the other hand, it has been found necessary to strike out several which had 

 been admitted on insufficient evidence. 



The present work contains descriptions of 145 species, including two (Platycercus alpinus 

 and Tribonyx mortieri) of which an account will be found in the accompanying pages. 



The leading feature in the Ornithology of New Zealand is thus expressed by a very accom- 

 plished zoological writer : — " Recent birds being divided into two great and trenchantly marked 

 groups, of very unequal extent, the smaller of these groups (the Ratitce) is found to contain six 

 most natural sections, comprising, to take the most exaggerated estimate, less than two score of 

 species, while the larger group (the Carinatce), though perhaps not containing more natural 

 sections, comprehends some ten thousand species. Now, two out of the six sections of this small 

 o-roup are absolutely restricted to New Zealand ; and these two sections contain considerably more 

 than half of the species known to belong to it. Thus, setting aside the Carinate birds of our 

 distant dependency (and some of them are sufficiently wonderful), its recent Ratite forms alone 

 (some twenty species, let us say) may be regarded as the proportional equivalent of one tenth of the 

 birds of the globe — or numerically, we may say, of an avifauna of about one thousand species "J. 



* Trans. N.-Z. Inetit. 1868, vol. i. t Ibid. pp. 105-112. % Nature, July 18, 1S72. 



