** 



INTKODUCTION. 



XXXI 



struggle for existence has, as might have been expected, proved too severe for these flightless 

 forms. Mr. Morgan Carkeek, the well-known surveyor, on his return from a two months' explora- 

 tion in the interior of the Marlborough district, informed me that during the whole time he had 

 met with only a single Wood-hen, whereas only a few years before these birds swarmed there. 

 This is one of the peculiar forms which a naturalist is very loth to lose sight of. The only 

 approach to it anywhere else is the Wood-hen of Lord Howe Island, which Dr. Sharpe proposes 

 to put into the same genus as the flightless Kail (Nesolimnas dieffenbachi) of the Chatham Islands, 

 which appears to have become extinct some fifty years ago. Professor Newton, I may here 

 remark, was the first to point out that the New Zealand Wood-hen and the Dodo of the Mauritius 

 are the only two known forms (excepting, of course, the Struthiones) in which the angle 

 formed by the axes of the coracoid and scapula is greater than a right angle — a feature of such 

 importance that Professor Huxley afterwards adopted it as one of the distinguishing characters 

 in his proposed scheme for the classification of birds, under the two divisions of Carinatse and 

 Katitae. 



Of the vanishing forms of bird-life, however, the most interesting, no doubt, are the various 

 species of Apteryx or Kiwi. These are practically wingless birds, belonging to the great natural 

 sub-class of Palasognathas — which embraces the Ostriches and Cassowaries — and they are so 

 anomalous in structure and so specialised in their generic character that no general treatise on 

 birds is deemed complete unless it contains an exhaustive account of them. In his masterly 

 memoir on the anatomy of Apteryx, the late Professor Owen wrote : " The Apteryx presents such 

 a singular and seemingly anomalous compound of characters belonging to different orders of birds 

 as may well make the naturalist pause before he ventures to pronounce against the possibility of a 

 like combination of peculiarities in the historical Dodo." The Professor lived, however, to 

 describe the greater part of the osteology of Didits ineptus. 



And not less important among these vanishing flightless birds, we have the Kakapo, or great 

 Ground-parrot, a bird furnished with excellent wings, but with their muscular mechanism so 

 atrophied by long disuse that they are useless for purposes of flight. This bird, too, is nocturnal, 

 and, being unable to fly, is being rapidly extirpated by the same agencies as the rest. A few years 

 ago this handsome Parrot was excessively abundant in the dense woods covering both slopes of 

 the Southern Alps and in all the West Coast Sounds, but now it is rarely heard of. The late Sir 

 Julius von Haast, during his exploration of the Canterbury portion of that mountainous region, 

 made a special study of its habits. He published the results in a very interesting paper, which 

 appeared first in the ' Ibis,' and was translated therefrom into several foreign languages. The 

 birds are strictly nocturnal, and repose during the day in underground holes or in hollow logs, so 

 that they are specially accessible to wild dogs and cats and to the introduced marauders of which 

 I have spoken. The Kakapo was so numerous in Haast's time that, for many months together, 

 it formed the staple item in the bill of fare of his exploring party. Later on hundreds of skins 

 were sent to Europe by the bird-dealers. Now it is a rare thing to see a specimen of it in the 

 market. One remarkable point in the structure of this bird is that the sternum, which in other 

 birds of its class has so prominent a keel, is so completely altered that it presents almost a flat 

 surface, although the symmetry of the skeleton does not appear to have suffered in any other 

 respect. Its variegated yellow and green plumage so closely harmonises with the vegetation 

 among which it lives that in the daytime it is almost impossible to distinguish it when at 

 rest — a beautiful illustration of the law of assimilative colouring for protective purposes. 



In the North Island we have the beautiful Huia (Heteralocha acutirostris) . This bird, of 

 the size of a Crow, has glossy jet-black plumage with white-tipped tail-feathers and ivory white 

 bill. It presents to us a structural feature quite unique among birds, inasmuch as the sexes 

 have differently shaped beaks — that of the male being strong and wedge-shaped, like the bill 





