40 
Capt. F. W. Hutton on certain 
state that it resembles in habits the Golden Plover of Europe,, 
this is very unlikely to be the case. He also makes no men¬ 
tion of the only specimen contained in any New-Zealand col¬ 
lection, viz. that in the Auckland Museum, which was pre¬ 
sented by Dr. Buller himself, but without any mention of the 
locality. 
Anarhynchus frontalis. 
I cannot follow Mr. Potts and Dr. Buller in thinking that 
the bent bill of this bird is useful in enabling it “ to follow * 
up retreating insects by making the circuit of a water-worn 
stone with far greater ease than if it had been furnished with, 
with a straight beak.” In the first place, unless the bird is 
also furnished with some means of seeing round a corner, it 
would not be able to see the insect it wanted to catch; in the 
second place, the bird is just as common in the sandy bed of 
the Waikato, and on the mud-flats of the Manukam harbour, 
where there are no stones, as it is in the shingle beds of the 
rivers of the south island ; and, in the third place, I have often 
watched the bird feeding and never yet saw it run round a 
stone more than any other bird might do. 
It seems to me that a bill bent on one side would be very 
useful to a bird whose usual food was either minute but nu¬ 
merous organisms, such as Diatomaceae &c., or small animals 
hidden among fine algae &c.; for by slightly inclining its head 
it could lay a considerable part of its bill flat on the ground, 
and thus, in the first case, take up a much larger quantity of 
those minute organisms at a time, or, in the latter, could 
search over a greater extent of algae for creatures that it could 
not see, than if it used only the point of the bill. The broad 
bill of the Duck performs the same office in a different man¬ 
ner. I by no means assert, however, that this is the use of 
the peculiar shape of the bill; for I have had no opportunity 
of observing one through a telescope when feeding, neither 
have I examined the contents of the stomach to ascertain on 
what they feed; but it must be remembered that the curve in 
the bill would not prevent the bird from eating insects and 
other animals also. 
