Birds. 3605 



alive, by no means an inelegant bird, nor, with a gracefully curved 

 neck and a horizontal body, does it appear the strange distended 

 figure here represented from the stuffed specimen before me. The 

 drawing is made, as nearly as possible, on the scale of one fifth of the 

 original size ; and I may add, for the benefit of those who have never 

 seen a bird of this description, that notwithstanding its appearance, it 

 is very accurate in all its proportions as well as in its markings. 



Alfred Charles Smith. 



Old Park, Devizes, 



September 9, 1852. 



On the Habits of the Kiwi-kiwi (Apteryx Mantelli, Bartlett), in 

 Confinement. By Alfred Newton, Esq. 



"About 1638 as I walked London streets I ( * ) the picture of a strange fowle 

 hong out upon a cloth ( * ) was and my selfe with one or two more then in company 

 went in to see it ; It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somwhat bigger 

 then the largest Turky Cock, and so legged and footed but shorter and thicker, and of 

 a more erect shape, couloured before like the breast of a yong Cock fesan, and on the 

 back of dunn or deare coulour. the keeper called it a Dodo and in the end of a chim- 

 ney in the chamber there lay an heap of large peble stones, whereof hee gave it many 

 in our sight some as bigg as nutmegs, and the keeper told us she eats them (meaning 

 to digestion) and though I remember not how farr the keeper was questioned therein 

 yet I am confident that afterwards shee cast them all agayne." — L 'Estranges MS., p. 9. 



Would that good Sir Hamon had given a fuller account of the 

 " great fowle " than the one I have above quoted ; we should not then 

 be now-a-days in doubt whether or no the subjects of King Charles I. 

 were really gratified with the sight of a veritable Didus ineptus, all 

 alive. However, I do not apprehend that any naturalist, two hundred 

 and odd years hence, will have any hesitation in believing that in 1852 

 the Zoological Society of London possessed a living Kiwi-kiwi ; and 

 I trust that the people of that day, from various sources, among which 

 the full, true, and particular account given by Mr. John Wolley (Zool. 

 3409) will hold a high rank, will entertain a very correct idea of Apte- 

 I ryx Mantelli, even if the Kiwis do, " ere long, share the fate of the 

 larger races in that wonderful creation of which they are, with the 

 Notornis discovered by Mr. Mantell, perhaps, the last remaining 

 types." t But there is a chance, and I hope a tolerably good one, 



* A small hole in the M.S., of the size of a silver threepenny piece. — (/. W) 

 f Report of Sec. Z. S., December 1851, p. 12. 



