Order GALLIFOEMES.] 



[Family MEGAPODIIDiE. 



% 



Subclass NEOGNATILffi. 

 MEGAPODIUS PRITCHAEDI. 



(SOUTHEEN MEGAPODE.) 



Megapodius pritchardi, Gray, Ann. Mag. N. H. xiv., p. 378 (186$). 

 Megapodius, Sp., Gheeseman, Trans. N. Z. Inst., vol. xxiii., p. 219. 



Me. Cheeseman, in his very interesting account of the Birds of the Kermadec Islands (I. c. pp. 

 216-226), mentions that a Mr. Johnson, who resided on Sunday Island, in that group, for a period 

 of fifteen years, described to him a species of Megapode which existed there prior to the eruption of 

 1876, inhabiting the floor of the large crater, where it made mounds of sand and decayed leaves from 

 two to three feet in height, and deposited its eggs therein to be hatched by the artificial heat. Mr. 

 Johnson stated that he had been in the habit of visiting these mounds for the purpose of collecting 

 the eggs and young birds, and that he frequently took five or six of the latter from the same nest at 

 one time. The eruption of 1876 covered the floor of the crater with a deposit of volcanic mud, 

 and apparently extirpated the species, for it has never been met with since. Mr. Cheeseman 

 recalls the fact that a species of Megapodius inhabited the crater-basin of Nuiafoou, in the Tonga 

 group, which is not further removed from Sunday Island than the mainland of New Zealand ; and 

 as the Kermadec Islands do not contain any endemic species — all but one, if not all, the known 

 land-birds being common to New Zealand also, and the sea-birds frequenting also either our waters 

 or those of Polynesia — he suggests that the extinct Sunday-Island Megapode and that inhabiting 

 Nuiafoou were identical. Knowing how persistent the various species of Megapodes are in their 

 local distribution, I have no doubt whatever in my mind — notwithstanding the apparent difference 

 in their nesting habits — that Mr. Cheeseman is right in his conjecture, and therefore consider that 

 I am justified in adding to our list of New Zealand birds Megapodius pritchardi, of which fortu- 

 nately I am able to give some particulars, obtained from a correspondent at Nuiafoou. 



The Eev. Shirley Baker, the first Premier of Tonga, stated at a meeting of the Auckland 

 Institute* that this bird is confined to the immediate vicinity of a deep crater-like lake on the 

 small island of Nuiafoou, to the northward of Tonga, and that in the light soil it excavates 

 tunnels, often six feet in length, and deposits therein its eggs, sometimes twenty in number, 

 leaving them to be hatched by the natural heat of the sun. 



As far back as 1870 I minutely described (Trans. N. Z. Inst., vol. hi., p. 14) a specimen 

 of this bird in the Auckland Museum obtained from one of the Friendly group and presented to 

 that institution by Captain Eough. 



The whole of the plumage dark cinereous or slaty-brown, inclining to grey on the abdomen and under tail- 

 coverts ; tinged with reddish brown on the back and upper surface of wings ; the outermost primary dark 

 brown ; the rest ashy-grey with white shafts in their basal and middle portion, darkening into brown towards 

 the tips. Bill, dark horn colour; feet, dark brown; irides, reddish brown ; bare space on the lower cheeks and 



* Trans. N. Z. hist., vol. xxvii., p. 452. 



