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the natives, it was extremely plentiful in every part of the country ; but for a period of more than 
thirty years it has never been met with in some of the districts far north. Its last refuge in 
the Kaipara was a small marshy island near Mangawhare, where in 1855 a few of them still existed ; 
and in the Whangarei district they were known to linger on the mangrove-flats near the present 
settlement as late as the year 1866. A specimen procured for me in this locality by Mr. Henry Mair 
enabled me to establish the identity of the species. In the provincial district of Wellington it is 
very generally dispersed, frequenting alike the woods and the open country. In the deep gullies of 
the Rimutaka ranges, on the marshy banks of the Manawatu river, in the low kahikatea swamps, and 
among the dry sand-dunes bordering on the sea I have at all times found it tolerably abundant. 
Among the farmers it has rather a bad reputation. There can be no doubt that it does some- 
times commit depredations. A friend of mine living in a country place was continually missing eggs 
from his poultry-yard ; and he determined to set a watch, when it was discovered that the Woodhen 
was the culprit. He observed the bird make straight for a nest full of eggs, tap a hole with its bill 
in each of them in succession, and suck up the contents. 
The Woodhen is furnished with ample wings, but they are so feebly developed as to render the 
bird quite incapable of flight. The quill-feathers have broad webs, but are soft and flexible, while 
the long inner secondaries take the form of a loose overlapping mantle. The legs, on the other hand, 
are very strongly developed, and the bird is, in some measure, compensated for its disability of wing 
by being able to run almost with the swiftness of a rat. Its anterior extremities, although useless 
for the ordinary purposes of flight, appear to be of some assistance to the bird when running, as they 
are briskly fluttered, apparently for the purpose of steadying the body. Like most other Rails, its wings 
are armed below the carpal joint with a sharp spur, the object of which, unless as a means of defence, 
it is not easy to divine. Even in very young birds it is strong and sharp, and at maturity attains a 
length of ‘25 of an inch. I have observed that when two of these birds are fighting they often butfet 
each other with their wings ; and I have frequently myself been made aware of the existence of this 
spur on seizing the bird with the hand. As, however, in the case of the smaller Rails, the spur is too 
diminutive to be at all effective as a weapon of defence, it may serve some other useful end in the 
economy of the bird, which has hitherto escaped discovery. 
It is a notorious fact of late that this species, notwithstanding its feebly developed wings, rendering 
it quite incapable of flight, is getting every year more plentiful in the settled districts of the North 
Island. The reason is doubtless to be found in the fact that while its natural enemies, hawks and 
wild cats, diminish with the progress of settlement, the cultivation of the country increases its 
advantages in the every-day struggle for existence. The nocturnal cry of the Woodhen is now very 
familiar in districts where a few years ago it was quite unknown. 
In discussing the osteology of this highly aberrant form of Rail, a curious fact was pointed out 
by Professor Newton, in a communication to the Zoological Society, namely that the New-Zealand 
Ocydromus and the Dodo of the Mauritius are the only two known forms (excepting, of course, the 
StrutMones) in which the angle formed by the axes of the coracoid and scapula is greater than a 
right angle * — ^a feature of such importance that Professor Huxley has since adopted it as one of the 
* Referring thereto, Professor Newton has favoured me with the following note : — “ This I pointed out at a meeting of the 
Zoological Society, held 12th December, 1865, when I described, for the first time in public, a portion of the scapular arch in 
Didus, in which the same thing occurs, and stated that, so far as I then knew (and, for the matter of that, still know), this 
feature was peculiar to these two genera alone among non-struthious birds. The remarks I made at this meeting were never 
printed ; for, learning that Prof. Owen wished to describe those portions of the skeleton of Btdus which Mr. George Clark had 
discovered, I caused my paper to be suppressed. (Of. PhU. Trans. 1869, p. 341, note.) I cannot attempt to give any reason that 
would plausibly account for this singular deviation of structure from the normal Carinate form in two birds so unlike as Ocydromus 
and Didus : there the matter is, and one must leave it at present.” 
