from an example in Mills's collection, which has been examined by myself. The 

 curved and slender bill makes its reference to Drepanis, as that name has been some- 

 times used, excusable; but Dr. Finsch unfortunately referred (Ibis, 1880, p. 80) to 

 the so-called " D. aurea " — the type of which came from Hawaii — the birds which he 

 obtained in Maui, belonging to a wholly different species, as is elsewhere shown in the 

 present work. 



This bright-coloured species is confined to the Island of Hawaii, where it is so un- 

 common that during eight months' collecting I obtained but five specimens. It may 

 be of interest to state the localities and give some details of the capture, as this is one 

 of the rarest of Hawaiian birds, and cannot, I think, be far from extinct. The first 

 example that I procured was on June 15th, 1887, at a ranche called Puulehua, in the 

 district of Kona, at an elevation of 5000 feet, and, soon after, I got another in the same 

 locality, while a third was shot by my friend Mr. Horswill in September, about three 

 miles from the Volcano House, on the Keauhou road. I had seen this bird the day 

 previous, sitting on an old stump of an ohia tree, and had fired at it but missed ; yet 

 the next day on our return to the spot we found it not thirty yards from where we 

 had seen it before, and Mr. Horswill shot it. It is a curious fact that the natives at 

 the house insisted it was the far-famed Mamo {Drepanis pacified) ; and this ignorance 

 tends to show that that species cannot have been seen of late years, as here were 

 natives living within fifteen miles of Olaa — formerly a famous bird-catching resort, 

 and supposed to be the home of the Mamo, — confounding it with a bird totally unlike 

 it in form and colour. Again, in January 1 888, when shooting in the forest on Puukapu 

 near Waimea, in company with Mr. Frank Spencer, jun., I saw an example of this 

 species in the flower-covered branches of an ohia tree, and called to my friend to fire ; 

 he killed it and brought down an Amakihi [Himatione virens) with the same barrel. 

 My fifth bird was shot within a few miles of Mana, the Hon. Samuel Parker's residence. 

 These five specimens were all obtained at altitudes ranging from 3000 to 5000 feet, so 

 that the habitat may be said to be the middle and upper forest-zones ; and there seems 

 to have been less difficulty in obtaining them in former times, as more than one of the 

 old explorers procured several during comparatively brief stays on the island. A good 

 figure of the male was given by Gould in his account of the birds of the Voyage of the 

 ' Sulphur.' That ship appears to have made Honolulu its headquarters, which the 

 explorers reached on July the 17th, 1837 ; there they remained till the 27th, much of 

 the interval, as the narrative tells us, being very agreeably spent among the lovely 

 valleys of Oahu. It is probable, therefore, that most of their collecting was done on 

 that island, but as they revisited the Islands in June 1839, they very possibly landed 

 on and explored Hawaii, to which this species is, so far as I know, peculiar. Bloxam, 

 Voy. ' Blonde,' App. p. 250, gives a brief description of it from specimens obtained 

 by the expedition ; he mentions AJcepaJcepa as its Hawaiian name, which has some 

 resemblance to its proper title of Akepeuie. No reference to the island which is its 

 home is made by any of the authors who have hitherto noticed it, except by Judge Dole 

 (Hawaiian Almanack, p. 45, 1879), who, after describing an example belonging to the 



