xiv INTEODUCTION. 



Professor Newton continues: — "Some years later another great opportunity was 

 missed, and this time by the American traveller Townsend, who, after crossing the 

 Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, sailed, in company with Nuttall, the well- 

 known naturalist, for the Sandwich Islands, where they arrived in January 1835, and 

 stayed nearly three months, visiting Oahu and Kauai. Returning at the end of the 

 year, Townsend found the Prussian naturalist Deppe at Honolulu, and with him passed 

 some time in the pursuit of natural history, visiting most of the windward islands 

 before he left in March 1837 \ Among the specimens obtained by Deppe for the 

 Berlin Museum were some of two species for which Lichtenstein rightly established 

 a new genus — the singular form Hemignathus — and, as it has since proved, both these 

 species were new, though he had not unnaturally identified one of them with a species 

 described by Latham. 



" Of Townsend's collection a considerable part was given to the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences at Philadelphia 2 , where it still remains; but he sent several specimens 

 to Audubon, at that time, I believe, in Edinburgh, and he parted with them to 

 Carfrae, a dealer there, who sold them to the late Sir William Jardine, at the dispersal 

 of whose collection I was so fortunate as to secure them — some of them bearinsr 

 Townsend's label — for the Museum of the University. If Townsend had but published 

 a list of his captures, he would indeed have rendered a very jgood service ; but of course 

 the value of island-forms, to say nothing of the fact that many of them were threatened 

 with extirpation by colonization and civilization, had not then been appreciated, if even 

 entertained, by naturalists. 



" In the year of Townsend's departure the French frigate ' Venus,' in the course of 

 her troublous career under Du Petit-Thouars, arrived in the Sandwich Islands, with two 



1 As Townsend's work is not commonly to be met with, the following extracts may be acceptable to the 

 reader. The first (pp. 207-208) refers to the island of Kauai and to the month of February 1835; the 

 second (p. 269) to Oahu and to the date of January 15th, 1836 :— 



" We made here several long excursions over the hills and through the deep valleys, without much success. 

 The birds are the same as those we found and collected at Oahu, but are not so numerous. They are 

 principally creepers {Gerthla) and honey-suckers (Nectarinia) ; feed chiefly upon flowers, and the sweet juice 

 of the banana, and some species are very abuudant. The native boys here have adopted a singular mode of 

 catching the honey sucking birds. They lay themselves flat upon their backs on the ground, and cover their 

 whole bodies with bushes, and the campanulate flowers of which the birds are in search. One of these flowers 

 is then held by the lower portion of the tube between the fingers and the thumb ; the little bird inserts his 

 long, curved bill to the base of the flower, when it is immediately seized by the fingers of the boy, and the 

 little flutterer disappears beneath the mass of bushes. In this way dozens of beautiful birds are taken, and 

 they are brought to us living and uninjured." 



" Several days ago Mr. Deppe and myself visited Nuano valley, where wo hired a native house, in which we 

 are now living. Our object has been to procure birds, plants, &c, and we have so far been very successful. 

 I have already prepared about eighty birds which I procured here." 



2 " In mentioning these facts, I desire to record my deep gratitude to the authorities of both these 

 museums — Berlin and Philadelphia — for their obliging readiness in allowing me to have some of these 

 valuable specimens, one of them unique, for examination." 



