41 



procure a good representative collection of specimens for the British Museum. In this he was 

 ably assisted by his private secretary, Major Alexander, C.M.G., and by his A.D.C., the Hon. 

 Charles Hill-Trevor. The large collections which His Excellency was able to forward, from 

 time to time, to the National Collection, were found to contain a new species of Cormorant 

 from the Bounty Islands, which has, very appropriately, been dedicated to him by name. 

 It is thus diagnosed by Mr. Grant (I.e.) : — 



Adult male.— Mostly nearly allied to P. stewarti, but at once distinguished by the absence of the wide 

 white band across the ramp (only suggested by one white feather on each side) and by the very different 

 colour of the soft naked skin on the face. Iris, pale brown ; naked skin round the eye and gular pouch, light 

 orange ; legs and feet, flesh-colour. Total length, 27'0 inches ; culmen, from feathers on forehead to tip 

 2*4, depth to cutting-edge, 0"4 ; wing, 112 ; tail, 5*3 ; tarsus, 2'6 ; outermost toe and claw, 44. 



Hab. — Bounty Islands, New Zealand, January 15th, 1901. 



Order PELECANlFOEMES.j 



[Family PHALACROCORACID^E. 



PHALACROCOIUX SULCIR08TRI8. 



(BLACK SHAG.) 



Phalacrocorax sulcirostris, Brandt, Bull., Acad. St. Petersb., iii., p. 56 (1837). 



I had the pleasure of adding this species to our list of indigenous New Zealand birds, on the 

 authority of a skin received by me from Mr. A. T. Pycroft, of Opua, Bay of Islands.* It is the 

 same bird as that inhabiting Australia, and named Phalacrocorax sulcirostris in G-ould's folio 

 edition, although subsequently, in his ' Handbook of the Birds of Australia,' he adopted 

 Bonaparte's name of G. stictocephalus. The species was included in Mr. G-. E. Gray's 

 ' List of New Zealand Birds,' of 1862, on the authority of specimens said to have come 

 from New Zealand, but, not having been met with again, it had dropped out of our list as 

 of doubtful origin, the last reference to it being in Captain Hutton's Manual of 1872, with this 

 note : " I have seen no specimens." It is satisfactory, therefore, to be able to reinstate it on 

 indubitable evidence. Accompanying the specimen, I had a letter from Mr. A. T. Pycroft, from 

 which I extract the following : — 



" I am sending you by parcels post a skin of a small Black Shag which was shot at 

 the mouth of the Waitangi River in July last. I have sent the Auckland Museum two 

 skins similar to the one which I am sending to you. Mr. Cheeseman favours the idea that 

 this bird is a distinct species from the White-throated Shag (Phalacrocorax brevirostris). 

 From the information which I have collected myself I should think it was a distinct bird; 

 but I should feel satisfied if you would kindly take the trouble to examine the skin and tell 

 me if it is so or not. I cannot, unfortunately, tell you if it was a male or female. Seven 

 of these birds were killed at one shot at Waitangi, and there were fully one hundred of them 



Yol. ii. — 6 



Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxx., p. 196. 



