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man, that when he came out to the Colony in 1856, in the ship ' Creswell,' he was acting 

 as servant to Captain King, a gentleman much devoted to natural history. Martin, who 

 had been a pupil of Gardner, of Oxford Street, was employed by his master in making a 

 collection of native birds ; and, almost immediately after landing at Wellington, he pro- 

 ceeded up the West Coast, shooting and skinning birds as he went, till he had collected 

 enough to fill several large cases. When camped in the woods under Mount Egmont, in 

 the Taranaki district, one evening at dusk a large bird flew over the party, making a loud 

 laughing noise — ha, ha, ha ! Martin shot the bird, and it proved to be an Owl. It was 

 nearly as large as the specimen of Sceloglaux albifacies in the Nelson Museum, but much 

 darker in plumage, and without any appearance of white on the face. The eyes, as he 

 perfectly remembers, were of a dark-brown colour. This was impressed on his mind at the 

 time, because he had shot and skinned many specimens of the Morepork, of much smaller 

 size, and with vivid yellow eyes. What ultimately became of Captain King's collection 

 nobody knows. If it had been acquired by any public museum we should probably have 

 found some record of it, and an inspection of the Owl shot by Martin under the shadow 

 of Mount Egmont would have been most interesting. I fear there is no chance of this 

 now ; but his recital induced me to make a more critical examination of the Wairarapa 

 bird, the only specimen of Sceloglaux from the North Island of which we have any positive 

 knowledge. After comparing it with the series of 8. albifacies in my own collection, 

 and with some ten other specimens in various museums that were known to me, I came to 

 the conclusion that the North Island bird was quite distinct as a species from the white- 

 faced Owl of the South Island ; and in selecting a distinguishing name for it I have chosen 

 its most distinctive feature. 



When I was living in Wellington, in the summer of 1868-9, the bird described above was 

 sent in to the Colonial Museum, freshly killed, by a settler in the Wairarapa district, about 

 fifty miles from the city. It was carefully skinned and the sex determined by the Museum 

 taxidermist, and the specimen placed in the type collection. I took an early opportunity of 

 comparing it with the only specimen of Sceloglaux albifacies in the Museum collection — 

 one received some time before from Otago — and although appreciably smaller in size, I 

 took it to be a dark phase of that species. Two years later I came to England to publish 

 the first edition of my ' Birds of New Zealand,' and, at Sir James Hector's request, I 

 brought with me this Owl, with other skins of New Zealand birds, for the purpose of 

 having them mounted for exhibition in the Museum. This task was entrusted to the late 

 Mr. Burton, of Wardour Street. During this operation the tail of the Owl, probably on 

 account of some defect in it, was replaced by one from another species ; but it was so 

 well matched that, although the bird remained in the Colonial Museum for five and twenty 

 years, the counterfeit tail w T as never detected by Sir James Hector or myself. Shortly before 

 my last departure from the Colony, Sir James Hector permitted the specimen to be taken 

 out of the glass case for closer scrutiny. 



The species differs from Sceloglaux albifacies in its richer and darker colouring. There is 

 no white about the face, the whole of the facial disc, including the ear-coverts and the throat, 

 being dull rufous-brown ; the feathers of the forehead are paler, with a central streak of 

 blackish brown, which increases on the vertex and occiput, becoming the predominating 

 colour on those parts. It differs further from S. albifacies in having the entire surface 

 strongly suffused with rufous, the shoulders being almost entirely of that colour, shaded or 

 clouded with brown. Another distinguishing feature is that the quills are marked with 

 regular, transverse bars and a terminal edging of rufous brown ; on the secondaries these 

 bars are paler and more conspicuous, being equidistant from each other and of even breadth 



