01 apteryx australis - University of Texas Libraries

The misgivings of Vigors and some other of my zoological contemporaries were as to
the possibility of a terrestrial bird, of the sizeIsupposed, having been able, at any
time, to find subsistence in so small a tract as New Zealand.
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 itby 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 1. Similar evidence is given by M.D'Urville 2 and MM.
Quoy and Gaimard 3.
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, ifthere does
not now exist, in New Zealand, a struthious bird equal in size to the Ostrich" 4.
Nevertheless Iurged 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."
On the publication of the volume in 1838, one hundred extra copies of the paper
were struck off; and theseIdistributed in every quarter of the islands of New Zealand
where attention to such evidences was likely to be attracted.
In this distributionIwas efficiently aided by Colonel William Wakefield, at that
period zealously carrying out in New Zealand the principles of colonization advocated
by his brother Mr.Edward Gibbon "Wakefield ; by J. R. Gowen, Esq., a Director of the
then recently established " New-Zealand Company ;" by my friend Sir William Martin,
the first Chief Justice; and by the Right Rev. Dr. Selwyn, the first Bishop of the
islands.
The confirmatory response, anxiously expected through the years 1840, 1841, and
1842, at length arrived, in the letter from the Rev. William Cotton, M.A. 5,in that
from Colonel Wakefield, cited at p. 109, and in the collections of bones transmitted by
the Rev. William Williams, and received in1843 by the Rev. 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
2 Voyage de I'Astrolabe, tom. ii.p. 480 (1832).
3 Ib.'Zoologie.' "IInous a ete impossible de nous procurer le singulier oiseau qu'a figure Shaw sous le nom
d'Ajoteryx australis. Nous avons rapporté le manteau d'un Chef qui était recouvert des plumes de cet oiseau
1 Zoologie de la Coquille, tom. i.p. 418.
V
que les Zélandais de la Baie Tolaga connaissent sons le nom de 'Kiwi' " (tom. i.p. 158).
4 Proc. Zool. Soc. ut supra, p. 171.
5 Proc. Zool. Soc. part xi.1843, p. 74.