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Rh the Swifts got no food, while the Martins found abundance, or, at least, enough. This little incident is a key to much greater events.

The dates of the several species of Apteryx are as follows:—An A. australis, Shaw, then the only one, or part of one, in Europe, was in the Earl of Derby's Museum at Knowsley, 1833, and described in an elaborate memoir, ad hoc, by Professor Owen (Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. ii. p. 257). Mr. Gould says, in his 'Handbook to the Birds of Australia,' a work which is a great saving of time to an author (vol. ii. p. 567):—"For our first knowledge of the existence of an Apteryx we are indebted to the late Dr. Shaw, to whom the specimen figured by him in the 'Naturalist's Miscellany' was presented by Captain Barclay of the ship 'Providence,' who brought it from New Zealand about 1812. Dr. Shaw's figure was accompanied by a detailed drawing of the bill, foot, and rudimentary wing, of the natural size. After Dr. Shaw's death, his at that time unique specimen passed into the possession of the late Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley. His Lordship's being a private collection, and no other specimen having been seen either on the continent or in England, the existence of the species was doubted by naturalists generally for upwards of twenty years..... In June 1833 Mr. Yarrell published a paper on it, in the Transactions of the Zoological Society."

Mr. Gould, on the 8th June, 1847, in the Transactions of the Zoological Society, vol. iii. p. 379, figured and described Apteryx owenii, adult; and in the 'Proceedings' of the same Society, January 12, 1864, Mr. Leadbeater is stated to have exhibited the young of that bird.

Apteryx mantelli was specifically differentiated from A. australis by Mr. A.D. Bartlett (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1850, p. 274).

Lastly, A. haastii, Potts, was described by Mr. T.H. Potts in a paper read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 2nd August, 1871; and a series of adult and young of both sexes was exhibited in London at the Zoological Society's first Meeting of the present Session (3rd November, 1874), by myself.