Birds. 3423 



known to eat grubs, very young mice, pieces of meat, and worms, be- 

 ing especially fond of lob-worms. His mode of piercing the ground 

 seems to be too zealously practised not to be a constant habit, and it is 

 probably amongst decayed leaves and vegetable matter that the Apte- 

 ryx principally obtains its food. Mr. Yarrell describes a valve in the 

 Apteryx australis which would be pressed against and cover the nos- 

 trils in the operation ; but Mr. Owen speaks only of the form of the 

 bones as affording some protection in A. Mantelli.* It is at all events 

 not very obvious externally, but it is difficult to understand how stop- 

 pages of the nostrils should not be constantly occurring unless there 

 is some such safeguard. I do not remember ever to have seen either 

 snipes or woodcocks in the act of piercing the soft ground ; it is pro- 

 bable that they do it by bearing forward the weight of the body as the 

 Kiwi-kiwi does, but whether the different sense which predominates 

 in their beaks does not cause some departure from the exact method 

 in which the Kiwi-kiwi operates, remains to be learned. I am not 

 aware that water has ever been offered to him ; it would be interesting 

 to know whether he would ever drink or wash. 



I have never observed any use made of the little claw at the end of 

 the wing, which is too feeble to be available for defence. This claw 

 is probably only a development showing the relationship of the wing 

 to the legs, or, when compared with other animals, to their fore legs. 

 A similar claw is attached to the longest digit of the wing of a nest- 

 ling eagle. 



I have only to add that one of the keepers tells me he has seen the 

 Apteryx lie on its side, and strike out like the Rat Kangaroo ; but I 



* Dr. Mantell remarks, in speaking of the " common species " of Apteryx, having 

 just before mentioned the three species, that " the nasal apertures are at the base of 

 the beak ; * * by a strange mistake the nostrils are stated by authors to be 

 at the extremity of the beak."— (Fossils of Brit. Mus. Oct., 1851, p. 107). Mr. Yarrell 

 had described the nostrils as opening at the end of the beak in Lord Derby's original 

 specimen of A. australis. Mr. Owen, after a careful dissection of what is now called 

 A. Mantelli, had described them similarly in this bird ; and, if my memory serves me, 

 Mr. Gould had given no hint of any other mode of formation in A. Owenii. Dr. Man- 

 tell's more recent assertion must not lightly be passed over; and I see that in a speci- 

 men of the true A. australis in the British Museum, there is, in addition to the openings 

 near the tip of the beak, an appearance of two tubes between the cere and the base of 

 the beak, such as is not observable in A. Mantelli, which however is the "common spe- 

 cies." I have not yet examined this curious though perhaps fallacious structure. Mr. 

 Bartlett, in the paper read before the Zoological Society, in which he established the 

 two species, and spoke amongst others of Dr. Mantell's specimen of Apteryx australis, 

 made no allusion to any difference in the nostrils. 



