a 
' 
The misgivings of Vigors and some other of my zoological contemporaries were as to 
the possibility of a terrestrial bird, of the size I supposed, having been able, at any 4e Viger bfhey x 
time, to find subsistence in so small a tract as New Zealand. Sweenogg, 
That island, moreover, had been visited by accomplished naturalists; and the only 
evidence of a wingless bird which they had been able to obtain there, were fragments 
and feathers of a small one called “ Kivi-kivi” by the natives, who hunted it by night 
with torches and dogs. M. Lesson accordingly refers the evidences of this bird 
brought from New Zealand by the circumnavigatory vessel ‘La Coquille,’ in 1828, to 
the Apteryx australis of Shaw. Similar evidence is given by M. D’Urville? and MM. 
Quoy and Gaimard?®. 
The interpretation of a single fragment of bone seemed to my more experienced 
seniors too narrow a foundation for the inference “ that there had existed, if there does 
not now exist, in New Zealand, a struthious bird equal in size to the Ostrich”‘, 
Nevertheless I urged that it was not an Ostrich, consequently not any then known 
species of bird, and that it might as well have come from New Zealand as anywhere 
else. : 
Ultimately the admission of this paper into the ‘Transactions,’ with one plate, was : 
carried at the Committee, the responsibility of the paper “resting exclusively with 
the author.” Gu ae 
On the publication of the volume in 1838, one hundred extra Seaieen of the paper 
were struck off; and these I distributed in every quarter of the islands of New Zealand 
where attention to such evidences was likely at attracted, IPoripoan1 be A inh dea of a Je? 
In this distribution I was efficiently aided by Colonel William Wakefield, at that oo Ley aly eee fee. 
period zealously carrying out in New Zealand the principles of colonization advocated ein begerD of 
by his brother Mr, Edward Gibbon Wakefield; by J. R. Gowen, Esq., a Director of the Com Cpuak ta Wat 
then recently established ‘* New-Zealand Company ;” by my friend Sir William Martin, an ecicetht, (Ceegesh 
the first Chief Justice; and by the Right Rev. Dr. Selwyn, the first Bishop of the Mia fh Mizertaicr, Az) 
islands. Jee Outus wote (FCS Bh Set hecce. Ee 
The confirmatory response, anxiously expected through the years 1840, 1841, and 4..a¢ ref Plocctet 
1842, at length arrived, in the letter from the Rey. William Cotton, M.A.°, in that @@@ o- /® 69, 
from Colonel Wakefield, cited at p. 109, and in the collections of bones transmitted by i 
the Rey, William Williams, and received in 1843 by the Rey. Dr. Buckland, at Oxford, 
and by Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Richardson, at Haslar Hospital. 
These specimens, generously confided to me for description, form the subject of the 
’ 
' Zoologie de larCoquille, tom. i. p. 418, * Voyage de l’Astrolabe, tom. ii, p. 480 (1832). 
* Ib. ‘Zoologie,’ “Tl nous a été impossible de nous procurer le singulier oiseau qu’a figuré Shaw sous le nom 
dAptery« australis, Nous avons rapporté le manteau d’un Chef qui ¢tait reeouvert des plumes de cet oiseau 
que les Zélandais de la Baie Tolaga connaissent sous le nom de ‘ Kiwi’ ” (tom. i. p. 158). 
* Proc. Zool. Soc. ué supra, p. 171. * Proc. Zeel. Soc. part. xi, 1843, p. 74, 
pe MKrvas 5 eel vs Hh.5 |, be ee 
A tne Pahl I$y3 iO aera ie RA 
