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On my first, visit, in company with the late Mr. G. R. Gray, to the fine collection of Parrakeets in the 
galleiies of the British Museum, a mounted specimen standing on the same shelf with Platycercus 
novcB zealandios and P. auriceps immediately arrested my attention. My companion informed me 
that this was the type of Platycercus unicolor (Vigors), and that it was supposed to have come from 
ISew Zealand. On further inquiry I found that the bird had come to the Museum from the 
Zoological Society’s Gardens, where it had lived for some time, that its origin was quite unknown, 
and that the specimen was unique. 
Mr. Gray had included the species in his “ List of the Birds of New Zealand ” [l. c.) ; but in the 
absence of any positive evidence as to the habitat I felt bound to omit it from my former edition. 
The home of Platycercus unicolor has at last been discovered. Captain Fairchild, of the 
Government steamboat ‘ Hinemoa,’ on a visit to Antipodes Island in March 1886, found the bird 
comparatively common there and brought several specimens back with him to New Zealand. One of 
these was forwarded to me by Sir J. Hector; and this has enabled me to add the description of the 
female to that of the hitherto unique specimen of the male bird in the British-Museum collection. 
Although this type specimen (which has been in the Museum for upwards of fifty years) had 
no ascertained habitat it was always supposed to have come from New Zealand, and Mr. G. R. Gray 
included it in his list of our avifauna, published in ‘ The Ibis ’ (1862). 
Captain Fairchild, who is an excellent observer, reports that on Antipodes Island he found it 
inhabiting a plateau 1320 feet above the sea. It was very tame and easily caught. He never saw 
it take wing, which he attributes as much to the boisterous winds that sweep over this exposed 
island as to its naturally feeble powers of flight. It habitually walks and climbs among the tussock- 
grass, reminding one of the habits of the Australian Ground-Parrakeet [Pezoporus fonnosus) . 
Besides collecting several good specimens, Captain Fairchild brought with him to Wellington a 
live one. Sir James Hector sends me the following account of this interesting bird, for which he 
had proposed the name of Platycercus fairchiklii “ It is a ground Parrakeet, i. e. a Parrakeet that 
resembles a Kakapo. It is twice the bulk of P. novce zealandice, flies feebly, does not care to perch, 
climbs with its beak and feet, and walks in the same waddle-and-intoed fashion as the Kakapo.” 
So far as external characters go there is absolutely nothing by which to separate this bird from 
Platycercus. An investigation of its skeleton (of which the Colonial Museum has fortunately secured 
a specimen) may perhaps bring to light some new character showing its relation to a different group. 
But my own view at present is that the apparent inability to use its wings for purposes of flight is 
just another of those remarkable cases where the muscles have in some degree atrophied through 
long-continued disuse. Even in the case of Pezoporus from Australia, neither Mr. Sharpe nor I can 
find anything, apart from the different style of coloration, by which to distinguish the genus. 
Sii Geoige Giey tells me that forty years ago the natives assured him of the existence of a 
strange Panot on Cuvier Island, and described the sexes as differing from each other. Excepting 
only Mair Island, Cuvier is the most seaward point in the ITauraki Gulf. It is a mountainous 
island of a few thousand acres, rising abruptly from the ocean and clothed to the very summit with 
dense vegetation. It is difficult of approach, but there are several practicable landing-places in fine 
weather, lamihana Te Rauparaha and other natives of the present generation declared to Sir 
George that they had in their youth visited the island and actually seen these Parrots. He su^o-ested 
to me that they might be descendants of some stragglers from the South-Sea Islands ; but if such 
birds do really exist there, it seems far more likely that they are the last survivors of a species that 
has become extinct on the mainland, for, as before remarked, expiring forms linger longest on 
sea-girt islands remote from the coast, where the struggle for existence is less severe. 
