243 
in the southern portions of the North Island, is now quite extinct on the mainland, being met with 
only on a small wooded island in the Hauraki Gulf. As stated at p. 105, a nest of this species is 
preserved in the Colonial Museum ; and I have much pleasure in reproducing here a sketch of this 
specimen which appeared in the ‘Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute (vol. iii. pi. 12). 
Fa m. XENICm®. — The recent discovery of the true relations of the New-Zealand genera 
Xenicus and Acanthidositta is extremely interesting from a biological point of view • and my own 
belief is that as we become better acquainted with the anatomy or internal organs of our many 
endemic forms other equally important alterations will require to be made in our present classification 
of the genera. In my account of Xenicus longipes I have given all the information I have been able 
to collect respecting it. I have shown, I think, conclusively that Xenicus stolcesii is a myth, the 
creation of this new species having been due to an erroneous figure. In company with the late 
Mr. G. Pc. Gray, I examined the original drawing at the British Museum, in which I found the bill 
depicted as straight, and a mere indication given of the white superciliary streak. Mr. Gray told me 
that his artist was responsible for the alterations in the published figure, and that his own description 
of the species was inadvertently taken from the latter. 
The nest of Xenicus gilviventris mentioned at page 112 is now in my collection, and on account 
of its extreme rarity I have had it photographed and carefully drawn for reproduction here ; but, 
being to a larger scale than the other woodcuts, I have placed it at the end of these ‘ Notes 
on page 250. 
At page 115 I have described some peculiar conditions under which the nest of Acanthidositta 
clitoris has been found at different times. By way of adding another curious instance, Mr. W. W. 
Smith has sent me the following note “ I lately procured an egg of A. clitoris under peculiar 
circumstances. One of the men in the garden, when moving some broken pipes formerly belonging 
to the hot-water apparatus in the vinery, noticed a nest in one of them. Thinking it to be the nest 
of a mouse, he tore it out, when the tiny egg dropped upon the ground, but escaped injury. I am 
sending you the specimen, together with the materials composing the nest.” 
Fam. PLATYCERCID.ZE. — As will be seen at page 149, an interesting addition has been made 
to our Avifauna by the rediscovery on Antipodes Island of Platycercus unicolor, a species hitherto 
without any known habitat. The unique specimen upon which Mr. Vigors founded the species was 
more than half a century ago living in the Zoological Society’s Menagerie at Regent’s Park. On the 
11th January, 1831, the above-named naturalist exhibited the bird at a Meeting of the Society and 
made some remarks upon it, stating that, although its native place had not been ascertained, “from 
the more graduated form of the tail and the plumbeous colour of the bill it was conjectured to have 
belonged to some of the Australian islands, the Parrakeets of which are distinguished by these 
