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male bird has light- coloured and the female dark-coloured legs and feetj but the rule in regard to the latter 
has its exceptions. It would seem that the older the female bird gets the darker become the extremities, 
and there is every reason to believe that the Kiwi, like other struthious birds, lives often to an extreme age. 
A specimen obtained by me on the Pirongia mountain, during a Kiwi-hunt fully described in the 
following pages, is deserving of special mention here. The natives called it a “ Kiwi-kura,” in allusion to 
the reddish hue of its plumage. Instead of being blackish brown or rufous brown like the rest, the whole 
of the body-plumage is of a uniform dull brick-red ; and, what is more remarkable still, instead of the 
plumage being thickset with narrow shaft-lines, the feathers are long, broad, and fluffy, but with numerous 
stiff filaments, thus jrreserving the distinctive character of Apteryx biilleri, as hereinafter explained. The 
face, chin, and upper part of the throat are greyish white ; tarsi and toes pale greyish brown ; claws greyish 
black with white ridges. The stomach contained hinau and taiko berries. On dissection it proved to be a 
male, the testes being largely developed. Extreme length, following the curvature of the back, 24 inches 
(to end of outstretched legs 30'75) ; bill, along the ridge 4, along the edge of lower mandible 4‘75 ; tarsus 
2'5; middle toe and claw 3. 
This very interesting specimen was found in a nest-burrow with turn young birds ; and, as might have been 
expected, these, instead of being almost black, like ordinary examples, were reddish brown with much softer 
plumage. One of these chicks afterwards made its escape ; the skin of the other (which proved on dissection 
to be a male) is in my collection. At the age of three umeks it gave the following measurements : — Length 
9'5 inches; bill, along the ridge 1'75, along the edge of lower mandible 2'25; tarsus L5; middle toe and 
claw 1’75. The frayed or open character of the plumage so conspicuous in the adult is likewise congenital. 
There was a somewhat similar bird to this (also a male) in the collection wdiich I presented some years 
ago to the Colonial Museum ; but in that example the colour was brighter and more inclined to chestnut. 
In Sir Kobert Herbert's collection of New-Zealand rarities at Ickleton there is a fine female 
specimen of Apteryx hulleri from the Pirongia Kanges, in which not only is the plumage darker than in 
ordinary examples, but the tarsi and toes are almost black. There is a similar specimen (likewise a female) 
in my own collection. These were the only black -legged examples out of some thirty adult birds examined 
by me from that locality ; but a male specimen from the Ilokianga district has the plumage even darker and 
the tarsi and toes perfectly black. A fourth example from the Kawhia district (an adult female), which I 
purchased alive from the natives, has the extremities brownish grey, with black borders to the well-marked 
scutella. This bird likewise differs from the typical form in having the bill dark brown on its upper surface 
from the base to the tip, with a tinge of the same colour on the lower mandible ; and the claws blackish 
brown with whitish or horn-coloured ridges. 
In the structure of the plumage also there is more or less variation observable. Some have the 
prickly character, owing to the rigidity of the produced shafts, more pronounced than others; and in 
some the plumage is thicker and longer than in others. In one of my specimens from Pirongia the 
plumage of the shoulders is so dense and long that it forms, as it were, an overhanging mantle. 
It is said that during one hunting-season (in 1885) the Taupo natives caught on the Kai-manawa 
Kanges no less than three hundred Kiwis, of which five were albinoes. One of these was brought in to 
Taupo alive, and was in Major Scannelks charge for about five weeks. Ultimately it came into the posses- 
sion of Mr. Thomas Morrin of Auckland, who forwarded it to the Zoological Society of Sydney. Major 
Scannell informs me that it was a veiy handsome bird, being snow-white in every part, even to the bill 
and legs ; and that, owing to the extreme softness of the plumage, the bird looked, when at rest, exactly 
like a ball of white wool. Soon after its capture it became quite tame and ate voraciously of earthworms, 
a quart measure of which would disappear in a day. It did not long survive its expatriation, and is now 
preserved in the Australian Museum. 
General Remarks. Although the head of the Apteryx is small, the neck is large and muscular. There is also a 
great development of muscle on the thighs; and the feet are strong and powerful, and armed with sharp 
claws. (In the adult female, of which the general measurements are given above, the circumference of 
the tibia in its largest part was 6-25 inches, of the tarsal joint 3-25, and of the tarsus 2.) The bill is 
broad at the base, then tapering, gently arched, and very much produced, with a slight enlargement at 
the tip, under which the nostrils are situated. The tongue is short and fiattened, very thin, but rigid in 
its anterior portion, with an even width of ’2 of an inch, and rounded at the extremity. The wings are 
