.115 
materials composing it being the skeletons of decayed leaves, the wiry stems of plants, rootlets, and 
a few feathers. 
Captain Mair discovered a nest under the thatched eaves of a Maori hut ; and Mr. E. Pharazyn 
sent me an egg taken from another nest found concealed among the dry roots of a fallen tree. 
Mr. Potts has found the nest “very cleverly built, in a roll of bark that hung suspended in a thicket 
of climbing convolvulus,” and, at another time, in a small hole in the trunk of a black birch. 
More than once he has known the bird to occupy the mortice-hole of a stock-yard post ; also to 
utilize the skull of a horse, and to build between the slabs of a bush hut, adapting the form of its 
nest to the immediate surroundings. 
The Eifleman has been found breeding as early in the year as the month of August ; and in a 
specimen which I killed in the Euahine ranges on the 23rd of December the ovary contained an 
undeveloped egg of the size of buck-shot, while the bareness of the underparts bore indication that 
the bird had already been sitting. From these facts we may, I think, reasonably infer that this 
species produces two broods in the season. The companion male bird on this occasion also had the 
abdomen bare, thus affording presumptive evidence that the sexes share the labour of incubation. 
The eggs vary in number from three to five ; they are very fragile, broadly ovoid, or inclined to a 
spherical form, measuring -6 of an inch in length by -5 in breadth, and perfectly white, with a slightly 
glossy surface. 
Before leaving the great Order of Passeres and passing on to the next, the Picariae, it may be 
useful to note that most of the Passerine genera found in New Zealand are strictly endemic or 
peculiar to the country. Without of course taking into account the undoubted stragglers from 
abroad, the only exceptions to this rule are Sphenceacus, wdiich occurs also in Australia ; Gerygone and 
lihipidura, of which there are representatives in Australia, Tasmania, Norfolk Island, New Guinea, 
and many of the Indo-Malayan Islands ; Zosterops, whose range extends over the entire southern 
hemisphere; and Anthus, which occurs in most parts of the world. 
I have already explained in my account of Xenicus why it became necessary to remove that form 
and Acanthidositta from their old position among the Certhiidse and to place them in a new family 
at the end of the Passeres. Both these forms are, in fact, dwarf Pittas of a degenerate type. They 
have no relations in New Zealand, and their nearest allies in Australia are the true Pittidie, a highly 
specialized group extending to New Guinea and, through the entire Malay Archipelago, to India 
and China. One species occurs in West Africa ; but in all the other zoological regions of the earth, 
so far as we at present know, this type is absent. 
Q 2 
