xl 
INTRODUCTION. 
ptilus, already mentioned, we have seven species belonging to the genera Platycercus and Nestor, all 
of which are peculiar to New Zealand and her satellites. 
As compared with the Avifauna of Australia, the paucity of species is particularly noticeable in 
the following well-distributed families, namely, Sylviidce, Campephagidce, Mitscicapidce , Alcedinidce, 
Columbidce, and Tetraonidce. 
The families belonging exclusively to New Zealand are five in number — the Turnagridce, Xenicidas , 
Nestoridce, String opidoe, and Apterygidce — and, as already indicated, possibly a sixth represented by 
the remarkable genus Glaucopis. The great development of the Procellariidce, or Family of Petrels, 
is a feature which New Zealand shares in common with Australia and Southern Polynesia. The South 
Pacific is the great nursery, so to speak, of this extensive Family, and no less than 3B species have, from 
time to time, been recorded on the New-Zealand coasts or from the surrounding seas. These include 
nearly all the known species of Albatros, and a number of oceanic birds of considerable interest, 
although as a rule not conspicuous for their beauty. Some of these have a range extending over 
both hemispheres ; others are confined to apparently small tracts of ocean ; while others again are 
migratory within certain degrees of latitude and longitude. Altogether they comprise a well-defined 
group of Birds (raised now to the dignity of an Order, under the name of Tubinares), whose economic 
and domestic history, owing to their pelagic and semi-nocturnal habits, has not yet been fully 
investigated or recorded. 
The occasional capture in New Zealand of such tropical forms as Phaethon rubricauda and 
Tachypetes arpuila, although interesting occurrences per se, cannot be regarded, in any strict sense, as 
a feature in the Avifauna. 
Of Meliphagine birds New Zealand possesses a fair number in the genera Prosthemadera, 
Anthornis, Pogonornis, and, in a lesser degree, in Zosterops and the brush-tongued Nestor, all of which 
are endemic ; but the honey-eating genera of Australia, such as Ptilotis, Meliphaga, and Tropido- 
rhynchus, are entirely absent. Acanthochcera, carunculata has occurred in a wild state, but only as 
an extremely rare straggler from the Eucalyptus- brushes of its native country. 
Among the Limicolce there are several species which touch at New Zealand in their seasonal 
migrations to and from the higher latitudes of the Eastern Hemisphere, or make this country their 
winter residence. Dr. Otto Finsch, as far back as 1867, in the Notes appended to his German 
translation of my ‘ Essay on the Ornithology of New Zealand,’ expressed his surprise that such species 
as Strepsilas interpres, Totanus incanus, and Tringa canutus had not been recorded among these 
seasonal migrants. Since that time all of these, as well as Phalaropus fulicarius, Numenius cyanopus, 
and Tringa acuminata, have been added to the list. The two most remarkable instances, however, 
of this class are, on the one hand, the occasional occurrence of the Eastern Golden Plover (Charadrius 
fulvus), whose range extends over Australia, New Guinea, the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and 
Polynesia, and northwards to its breeding-grounds in Siberia and Kamtschatka, and, on the other, the 
regular autumnal migration of the Bar-tailed Godwit ( Limosa novee zealandice ), which goes north- 
wards to breed in the high latitudes of Eastern Asia. To my mind, in the whole romance of 
natural history there is nothing to be compared with this seasonal migration of the Godwit. 
This bird is the Eastern representative of the European Limosa lapponica, to which it bears a close 
resemblance ; and, like that species, it has a very extensive geographical range. Both of them are 
migratory in their respective hemispheres ; and while the other species breeds in the high Northern 
