183 



COTURNIX NOVAEZELANDIAE QUOY & GAIM. 



(Plate 28, Fig. 2.) 



Cotumix Novae- Zelandiae Quoy and Gaimard, Voy. Astrolabe, Zool. I. p. 242, pi. 24, 

 fig. 1 (1830 — " II habit la baie Chouraki (riviere Tamise de Cook), k la Nouvelle — 

 Zelande"); Gould, Syn. B. Austr., text and pi. fig 2 (1837-38); Buller, B. New 

 Zealand, p. 161, pi. (1873); Hist - B - New Zealand, 2nd ed. I, p. 225, pi. XXIII (1888) ; 

 Grant, Cat. B. Brit. Mus. XXII p. 245 (1893). 



THIS Quail, though a typical Cotumix, is easily distinguished from all 

 other species. The male has the upper-side almost black, each feather 

 bordered and indistinctly barred with rufous-brown, and with a wide, 

 creamy white shaft-line. The throat and sides of the head are rufous- 

 cinnamon, the feathers of the chest and breast at their basal half buff with 

 a broken black cross-bar, the distal half black, with two pale buff spots 

 near the tip, or with a continuous white border. 



This sole representative of the " gamebirds " in New Zealand was in 

 former days very numerous in both islands, but especially so in the South 

 Island, wherever there was open grass-land, but is now evidently extinct. 

 Its disappearance is apparently not due to excessive shooting, but rather to 

 the introduction of rats, cats, and dogs, and last, but not least, to bush-fires 

 and to the regular burning of the sheep-runs, according to Sir Walter 

 Buller. No doubt the establishment itself of extensive sheep-farms in the 

 once, more or less, uninhabited grass-land was ominous for the future of 

 the Quail. 



It is not quite clear when the Quail disappeared. The last on the 

 North Island was shot by Captain Mair at Whangarei in 1860. Specimens 

 were recorded in 1867 and 1869, but were apparently not procured. In 

 Haast's "Journal of Exploration in the Nelson Province" it is said to be 

 still very abundant in 1861 on the grassy plains of the interior. 



Sir Walter Buller mentions two specimens said to be from an island 

 in Blue Skin Bay, shot in " 1867 or 1868." In his Second Edition of the 

 " Birds of New Zealand " he informs us that it was found occasionally in 

 the South Island down to 1875, but in the " Supplement" he speaks of a 

 specimen said to have been shot in 1871, but adds, " There is no absolute 

 evidence of it," and "if true, this individual bird must have been about the 

 last of its race." Therefore, evidently the note about 1875 was erroneous. 



