24 HAW All AH BIRDS. 



for the- priests to watch the motions of certain birds and listen to 

 their songs that by this means they might learn the will of the 

 Gods, and when the bird-catcher plied his calling that the feather 

 tribute might not be wanting to pay the taxes imposed by the 

 chiefs, then we may be sure bird-lore was well-nigh universal. 



The bird-catchers, especially, must have been thoroughly famil- 

 iar not only with the haunts of all the feathered kind, but with 

 their songs and their habits. 



But taxes are no longer payable in feathers ; no longer does the 

 bird-catcher ply his calling; the priest no more reads auguries 

 from the songs of birds ; the old days- have gone forever, and with 

 the old days and the old conditions have gone the greater part of 

 Hawaiian bird-lore. 



HISTORY OF ORNITHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN THE ISLANDS. 



The history of ornithological investigations in the Islands is on 

 the whole a brief one, and a few words devoted to the subject 

 may be of interest. An admirable resume of the subject by Prof. 

 Alfred Newton was published in Nature for 1892 and is quoted 

 in the introduction to Wilson's Birds of the Hawaiian Islands 

 above referred to, from which the following notes are chiefly 

 . culled. 



As is well known the Islands were discovered by Cook in 

 1779. The natural history specimens obtained by Cook came 

 from the islands of Kauai, Niihau and Hawaii. The first knowl- 

 edge of the Islands' avian inhabitants based upon the Cook col- 

 lections, reached the world in 1781-85 through Lathams' General 

 Synopsis of Birds. Most of the actual specimens collected by 

 Cook's ships, probably not very many in number, have been lost. 

 The loss is the more unfortunate as Latham's original descrip- 

 tions, as well as Gmelin's, which were based upon those of the 

 former, leave much to be desired, both in respect to precision and 

 sufficiency. Moreover the early collectors took little pains in 

 labelling specimens, and either did not label them at all or indi- 

 cated their source as "Sandwich Islands," leaving the particular 

 island to be guessed ; for the great differences now known to 

 exist between the birds of the several islands, were not suspected 



