*l 



Captain Cook's last voyage, cited above, we find H. sanguined referred to as follows :— 

 " The scarlet birds already described [Vestiaria coccinea] which were brought for sale, 

 were never met with alive ; but we saw a single small one, about the size of a canary 

 bird, of a deep crimson colour." These observations were made on the first visit to the 

 island of Kauai — or Atooi, as it was termed by the early explorers. 



The Hawaiians in their old mythology frequently make mention of the Apapane and 

 of its sweet song, and the following extract from the romantic story of Laieikawai 

 (' Legends and Myths of Hawaii,' pp. 459, 460) may be of interest :— 



" The kahu [servant] of the king first met the princess and her companion, and, 

 when requested by him to favour his royal master with a visit, the princess informed 

 him that she might possibly comply with his request the night following. ' If I come,' 

 she said, « I will give you warning.' ' Now, listen and heed,' she continued. ' If you 

 hear the voice of the Ao [Procellaria alba X] I am not in its notes, and when you hear 

 the caw of the Alala [Corvics hawdiiensis] I am not in its voice. When the notes of 

 the Elepaio [Chasiempis sandvicensis] are heard, I am getting ready to descend. When 

 you hear the song of the Apapane [Himatione sanguined] 1 shall have come out of my 

 house. Listen, then, and if you hear the Iiwipolena [ Vestiaria coccinea'] singing, I am 

 outside of your house. Come forth and meet me.' And so it came to pass. In the 

 MM, or first watch of the evening, resounded the cry of the Ao, in the second watch the 

 caw of the Alala, at midnight the chirruping of the Elepaio, in the pili of the morning 

 the song of the Apapane, and at daybreak the voice of the Iiwipolena. Then a shadow 

 fell on the door, ' and we were enveloped,' said the king, ' in a thick fog, and when it 

 cleared away the princess was seen in her glorious beauty, borne on the wings of birds.' 

 The name of the divine being, he said, was Laieikawai." 



Of this species I obtained examples on all the islands, which I am quite unable to 

 distinguish one from another. Dr. Stejneger (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1887, p. 95) states 

 that he carefully compared five specimens procured by the U.S. Exploring Expedition 

 and one by Dr. Townsend l with three sent by Mr. Knudsen, and goes on to say that 

 neither in colour nor in dimensions can he discover any difference between them. It 

 was formerly a pretty general belief that the red plumage of this species was peculiar 

 to the male, and that the female was greenish. Thus Reichenbach, as above cited, 

 described and figured (fig. 3833) one of the green species of Himatione as the female 

 of this one, stating that it is "Above olive-green, shading into grass-green, below 

 greenish yellow, wings and tail blackish brown, bill and feet brown." Herr von Pelzeln 

 also, in his paper on the sexual difference of the Honey-suckers of the Sandwich Islands, 

 to which reference is made in the synonymy above given, thought that Himatione virens 

 was the young of this species, and sought to distinguish between the male and female as 

 follows : — " In the female the under mandible with the exception of the point whitish, 



1 Thanks to the kindness of the authorities of the Museum of the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia in 

 forwarding many specimens of the birds collected by Dr. Townsend, I have been enabled to compare three 

 of his examples of the present species with mine. Most of those from that excellent collector are in a capital 

 state of preservation, though now over 50 years old. 



