

Hoohoo, Uho, and so forth, according to their fancy, a mistake 1 which has been 

 perpetuated by later writers, not only in the specific, but even in the generic designa- 

 tion ; Lesson, however, did not, as is often supposed, employ Moho as a strictly generic 

 term, George Eobert Gray being the first to do so. 



But though Latham was the original describer of the species, Blasius Merrem two 

 years later had the good fortune to bestow upon it the earliest scientific appellation, 

 Gracula nobilis, and to figure it without reference to that author's work — while placing 

 it in an entirely distinct genus — in his ' Beytrage zur besondern Geschichte der Vogel,' 

 published in 1784 at Gottingen, where he was at the time a Professor. He states that 

 an example had been sent to the museum there by King George III., who, as Elector 

 of Hanover, seems to have taken great interest in the University founded by his 

 predecessor : but, in referring it to the genus Gracula, he was misled by its apparent 

 resemblance to the G. longirostra of Pallas ; while Gmelin, with the usual perspicacity 

 of a compiler, failed to see that Merrem's bird was identical with that of Latham, and 

 so made two species out of one : later writers, again, bestowed upon it various names, 

 which were set aside for several reasons by Professor Cabanis in favour of Acrulocercus 2 

 in 1847, the same year that Gray adopted Lesson's barbarous Moho. 



It does not appear that after the days of Cook any additional information concerning 

 the subject of our notice reached the scientific world for many years. It is briefly 

 mentioned in the meagre list by Bloxam appended to the narrative of Lord Byron's 

 voyage in H.M.S. ' Blonde,' — the vessel which, in 1825, conveyed home the corpses of 

 the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands, who had died in England, — but merely 

 as " the bird whose yellow feathers are so highly prized," showing that the writer did 

 not discriminate between it and Drepanis pacifica. Very different is the case with the 

 naturalists attached to the celebrated United States Exploring Expedition under 

 Commodore Wilkes in the ' Vincennes ' and ' Peacock ' ; for its ornithologist, Titian R, 

 Peale, in a work of which nearly all the copies were unfortunately destroyed, gives a 

 very good description of the bird from Hawaii, mentioning not only its note, its love of 

 the loftiest forest-trees, and its habits in general, but also the use of its feathers and 

 the method of capture — all agreeing well with my own experience ; as does the fact of 

 his writing the native name O-O. Cassin, in the ' Proceedings ' of the Academy of 

 Philadelphia for 1855, compared the specimens then obtained, which he considered to 

 represent examples of both sexes, with those presented to its Museum by the well-known 



1 The mistake (for such it undoubtedly was) in regard to Moho originated with W. Ellis, describing himself 

 as " assistant^surgeon to both vessels" in Cook's Expedition, wbo also executed the series of drawings now in 

 the British Museum (Natural History). In a passage in his ' Narrative ' of the voyage (vol. ii. p. 156), he 

 writes : — " They have also a kind of fly-flap made of a bunch of feathers fixed to the end of a thin piece of 

 smooth and polished wood : they are generally made of the tail-feathers of the cock, but the better sort of 

 people have them of the tropick birds feathers, or those belonging to a black and yellow bird called mo-ho." 

 0-0 is the correct name of this species, Mo-ho is that of Rallus ecaudatus, King. 



1 Acrulocercus, signifying a tail that is curly at the tip, though apt enough for the present species, is unfor- 

 tunate as regards its two congeners, where the tail presents no such peculiarity. 



