Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/798

778 New Zealand, that land of oddities in Nature, adds another to our list in this place. I refer to the species called the huia by the native Maoris, Owing to the fact that the bill is entirely different in the two sexes, the male and female have been referred to two distinct species (Fig, 9). Newton says: "According to the personal observation of Sir W. Buller, who enters at length on the natural history of the huia (Birds of New Zealand, second edition, vol, i, 23p, 7-17), its favorite food is the grub of a timberboring beetle, and the male bird with his short, stout bill attacks the more decayed portions of the wood and chisels out his prey, while the female with her long, slender bill probes the holes in the sounder part, the hardness of which resists his weapon; or when he, having removed the decayed portion, is unable to reach the grub, the female comes to his aid and accomplishes what he has failed to do. The huia is entirely a forest bird, and is doubtless one of those doomed to extinction, though at present it seems to maintain its existence. Except a white terminal band on the tail, the whole plumage in both sexes is black, with green metallic gloss; the bill is ivory white, and the large rounded wattles at the gape are of a rich orange" (Dictionary of Birds, part ii, p. 438).

Before concluding I will refer to one or two more of the puzzling outliers to be found among the passerine birds, and none of them have exercised the ornithologist more than the curious little "scrub birds" of Australia. Shortly after these were first made known to science they were simply regarded as belonging to the Australian warblers, but after their internal structure was examined it was found that they constituted quite a distinct family, to which now the two species known have been relegated, So far as I am at present aware, neither the nest nor the eggs nor even the female of either of the species of this family are known, and the only birds supposed to be allied to them are the famous "lyre birds" (see Fig. 10), also of Australia. These last are so curious, both in their external appearance and in their internal structure, that they have by various systematists and describers been assigned to all sorts of positions and considered to have been allied to widely separated groups. Originally thought to be a "pheasant," and subsequently a "bird of paradise," and by Huxley placed in a group by itself, the relationships of the Menura were by no means unraveled until Newton took it in hand in 1875, more than three quarters of a century after its discovery, and placed it in a distinct family—the Menuridæ of the great passerine group. He also declared its alliance with the "scrub birds," for which he created another family, the Atrichiidæ, as