3,5 



PROSPECTUS. 



It has been remarked by a celebrated naturalist that " New Zealand is the most interesting 

 ornithological province in the world;" and in a qualified sense this is no doubt true. The last 

 remnant of a former continent, and, geologically considered, probably the oldest country on the 

 face of our globe, it contains at the present day the only living representatives of an extinct 

 race of wonderful Struthious birds. 



Within recent historic times this circumscribed area, scarcely equal in extent to that of 

 Great Britain, was tenanted, to the entire exclusion of Mammalia, by countless numbers of 

 gantic brevipennate or wingless birds, of various genera and species, the largest attaining to a 

 stature nearly twice that of a full-grown Ostrich. These colossal ornithic types have disappeared ; 

 but their diminutive representatives (the different species of Apteryx) still exist, in diminished 

 numbers, in various parts of the country ; and these are objects of the highest interest to the 

 natural-historian. But apart from this view of the subject the avifauna of New Zealand presents 

 many special features of considerable interest. A large proportion of the genera are peculiar to 

 the country ; while some of the forms are perfectly anomalous, being entirely without a parallel 

 in any other part of the world. 



Under the changed physical conditions of the country, brought about by the operations of 

 colonization, some of these remarkable forms have already become almost, if not quite, extinct, 

 and others are fast expiring. It has been the author's desire to collect and place on record a 

 complete life-history of these birds before their final extirpation shall have rendered such a task 

 impossible ; and it will be his aim to produce a book at once acceptable to scientific men in 

 general and useful to his fellow-colonists. 



It may be mentioned that the author's official position in New Zealand, during a period of 



a2 



