Ornithology of New Zealand. 113 
tempting to correct my inaccuracies Captain Hutton has fallen 
into some errors himself. 
SCELOGLAUX ALBIFACIES. 
Captain Hutton states that there is no evidence to show 
that the Laughing Owl was formerly more plentiful than 
it now is, or that it has almost totally disappeared. Of 
the former fact I have abundant evidence in the accounts 
given by the Maoris. As to the present scarcity of the bird, 
it may be sufficient to state that I have never heard of more 
than a dozen specimens, and have never seen but one living 
example. Captain Hutton does not state that he has ever 
met with this bird outside of a museum; and the peculiar 
sound “ like two branches of a tree rubbing together,” which 
he has so often heard in the New-Zealand forest, may, I think, 
be accounted for in a very simple manner, "without inventing 
an Owl. 
Stringops habroptilus. 
Captain Hutton ought to have quoted the whole of the sen¬ 
tence ; for I stated that in all the essential characteristics of 
structure it is a true Parrot.” My statement that there is 
no physiological reason why the Kakapo should not be as 
good a flier as any other Parrot,” must of course be read with 
the context. My argument was that disuse , under the usual 
operation of the laws of nature, had, in process of time, occa¬ 
sioned this physical disability of wing. My statement that 
this species subsists chiefly on mosses rests on the authority 
of Hr. Haast, who has collected and dissected far more spe¬ 
cimens than any other person in the colony, and whose close 
study of the bird in its native haunts is sufficiently manifest 
from the paper which appeared in f The Ibis * of 1864 (pp. 340 / 
-346). Captain Hutton does not inform us what particular 
kind of moss he offered in vain to his captive bird. 
Nestor occidentals. 
I am very doubtful myself about this species; and Hr. Finsch 
may therefore be right in uniting it to N. meridionalis (see 
my remarks, B. of N. Z. p. 50). I have in my possession^ 
however, a note from Captain Hutton declaring himself in 
