94 



offer a better subject for a monographer, and it is to be hoped that, if perish the genus 

 and species must, posterity will not have to lament the want of an exhaustive treatise on 

 the many and wonderful characteristics of what Professor Furbringer considers to be one 

 of the primitive forms of Psittaci" I would venture to remark that the absence of so 

 desirable a monograph can hardly be due to the want of material. Years ago I presented 

 to the British Museum a perfect skeleton of the Kakapo, and another to the Cambridge 

 University Museum. I also forwarded to London a specimen in spirits, for the express 

 purpose of having its anatomy investigated.* 



Mr. E. Henry, the official custodian of Eesolution Island, has supplied to Lord 

 Eanfurly the following interesting notes on the Kakapo, as reported in the 'Ibis' of October, 

 1905 (vol. v., pp. 583-585) : — " The male Kakapo can swell up his ' air-sac,' of which the 

 female has no trace, till it is nearly as big as his body, and must be a formidable-looking 

 fellow on parade. I never saw one booming, for they never do so in captivity. I went a 

 special trip to Wet Jacket Arm to try and get better acquainted with them, and on 

 January 21st, 1898, climbed a high ridge south-west of Oke Island. It was very steep and 

 rough, and all along its narrow top for half-a-mile were a number of ' dusting-holes,' 

 as I used to call them ; but there was not a particle of dust in them, for there had been 

 about an inch of rain every day for a month. ' Dusting- holes ' is, perhaps, a bad name ; 

 ' bowers ' would, I think, be more suitable. They were about eighteen inches in diameter, 

 fairly level on the bottom, and three inches deep, with steep sides. In some the peaty 

 earth was firmly pressed down as if by the naked hand, while in others it was freshly raked 

 up and loose. All were connected with one another by fresh, well-beaten pathways, and at 

 this season a good many birds must go up there of an evening, but in the off-season the 

 place is deserted. This suggests that the bowers are used for dancing or parade in the 

 courting season. The Australian Lyre-Birds make very similar holes. Some one suggested 

 that the booming may be a defiance or a challenge between the males, as in the case of 

 cocks crowing; but I think that among the thinly scattered population of Kakapos in this 

 dense forest, with such poor means of travelling, it was necessary for either the male or 

 female to have a loud call. The voice of the female Kakapo is a hoarse cough, and can be 

 only heard for a couple of hundred yards, while the booming of the males can be heard for 

 a couple of miles. Therefore, I think it likely that the males take up their places in the 

 'bowers,' extend their air-sacs, and give vent to their love-songs, and that the females, 

 attracted by this sound, come up to see the show. Though one may hear plenty of them in 

 the evening, it is never possible to tell where they are within a mile, as they do not keep 

 on calling long enough for one to hunt them up. They start with a couple of short 

 grunts, and then utter ^iyq or six deep, measured notes like the sound of a muffled drum, 

 the loudest in the middle. The male repeats this series about three times in the daylight 

 and is then silent, and other Kakapos, perhaps miles away, take up the sound. On this 

 ridge we got quite close to a calling bird, and can testify as to the power of the note. 

 I could feel the vibration of it, and likewise my boy, who was holding the dog thirty 

 yards away. I thought the drummer was just at my feet, and we stood still for a long 



* I hope this will be ultimately done by some competent anatomist in the Colony. I have come to the con- 

 clusion that there is a manifest advantage in all questions of this kind being investigated by ourselves on the 

 spot, the risk of error being thus reduced to a minimum. In illustration of my reasoning, I may refer to a very 

 curious mistake made by Dr. Alfred Eussel Wallace, the great apostle of the creed of natural selection — to whom, 

 indeed, we all metaphorically doff our hats in respectful admiration. In writing of the New Zealand avifauna he 

 confounds the Kakapo with the Kea, declaring that the moss-eating Stringops had become carnivorous, and was most 

 destructive to the settlers' sheep ! 



