3416 Birds, 



sometimes, I should guess, a foot from the ground as he stands up- 

 right. Occasionally he aims a blow sideways, as an eagle will do, 

 but differing from that bird in this respect, that the kind of injury he 

 is able to inflict, requires an impetus only to be attained by a great 

 previous elevation of the foot, whilst the eagle has only to direct his 

 aim by the shortest possible route. 



I have known the Kiwi-kiwi to reach a hand placed upon his back, 

 but then he has been in a more horizontal position. Generally the 

 movement is sudden and unexpected, but sometimes the leg is raised 

 up to the breast with the claws expanded, and kept there, at least in 

 one instance, for several minutes ; so that I began to think he was 

 bond fide resting upon one leg, as I have never otherwise seen him do. 



I do not know which leg he uses most frequently, but at any one 

 visit he generally is seen to use the same one in all his blows, but not 

 always. Sometimes, again, he takes a kind of spring forwards, and 

 possibly strikes with both legs. These, and the other attacks, when 

 made in good earnest, are accompanied by a kind of growl or grunt, 

 like that of an angry rabbit, which any one who has put his hand into 

 a hole where there is a tame rabbit well knows. The growl is often 

 closely either followed or preceded, I am not sure which, by a snap of 

 the beak, which snap is not so sharp as that made by an owl, and more 

 feeble, perhaps like the noise made by holding together by the ends 

 two small leather straps (say of the size of 6 inches by 1 inch), relax- 

 ing them in the middle, and suddenly bringing them together again. 

 This additional menace, however, is by no means a universal or even 

 a general accompaniment of the growl. 



On my first interview there appeared to me to be a kind of vicious 

 dig or catch in the middle of the stroke, which made it, as it were, 

 double ; and I conceived a theory that this was for the purpose of first 

 driving in the spur-like claw of the hind toe. Prof. Owen had howevei 

 previously shown that this supposed spur had no existence, as such, 

 at least in A. Mantelli ; and I have since that occasion seen little in- 

 dication of the double stroke. I have frequently subjected my hand 

 and hat to the blows, and have never felt the hind toe or seen the marl 

 of it. The three anterior claws, or one, or two of them, sometimes inflict 

 scratches, and sometimes the blow takes more the form of a pat; per- 

 haps according to the way in which it happens to be received, for th< 

 aim is very bad, and often, I can only speak for daylight, very wide ol 

 the mark. As to the force and effect of the stroke, I have not seen it 

 draw blood, though it once nearly did so on the tender side of my wrist; 

 were the claws less blunt, the scratches would probably be severe. 



