NOCTURNAL EMPLOYMENTS.

373

and legs to disturb the worms on which it feeds, and which it seizes with its long beak whenever they appear.

We are indebted to Messrs. Wolley and Newton* for an interesting account of the habits of the Apteryx in a state of captivity.

Their observations were made at night on the unique specimen now in the Zoological Gardens, and from these we take a few extracts. During the day the Kiwi sleeps, rolled into an oval shape, and only presents the appearance of a bunch of bristly brown hairs. The feet are bent under the body and the claws are contracted; for, although not a perching bird, Professor Owen has shown that it possesses the perching muscle, which gives such security to birds when roosting. The hind part of the body is elevated, from the great size of the thighs; the beak has the nostrils at the point, and reaches nearly through the feathers at the hinder part of the back, so that the breathing is unimpeded. Unlike the other nocturnal birds, its eye is very small and convex, with an expression somewhat like that of a rat or hedgehog, which is heightened by the long bristles near it, representing, in some measure, the whiskers so conspicuously elongated and developed in the mammalia whose habits are nocturnal. The eyes differ from those of all other birds in the absence, as Professor Owen has shown, of that characteristic structure, the marsupium. The light, at least that of a bull's-eye lantern directed at them, does not seem to affect the little black eyes, as there is none of that winking and blinking so peculiar to the expressive large eyes of the owls.

The Kiwi is very easily irritated. Mr. Wolley thus describes its mode of defence. Like the eagle in similar circumstances, it never seems to employ its beak as an offensive weapon, relying on its feet alone. "He suddenly

* "Zoologist," vol. x. (1852), pp. 3409, &c. and 3605, &c.

raises his leg, sometimes the right and sometimes the left, and strikes downwards with great force, while the other leg remains a steady and generally unmoved support. In this act he takes a great range, raising his foot quite up to his breast sometimes; I should guess, a foot from the ground as he stands upright. Occasionally he aims a blow sideways, as an eagle will do, but differing from that bird in this respect, that the kind of injury he is able to inflict, requires an impetus only to be attained by a great previous elevation of the foot, whilst the eagle has only to direct his aim by the shortest possible route."

Mr. Wolley describes the mode in which the Kiwi uses his long and peculiar beak. He employs it somewhat as an insect does its antennæ, or a quadruped does its nose, touching the ground and smelling as it were with it. He feeds at the Gardens on earth-worms, and on a considerable quantity of meat, cut into small pieces; the former were placed in a flower-pot over a heap of soil, into which they crawled through the hole at the bottom.

The Kiwi appears to have a good appetite, as most of the meat has disappeared before morning, and the "holes made by the beak of the bird, all over the soil, show how busy he has been in hunting for worms." Mr. Wolley has seen the Kiwi push its beak into the light soil almost up to the eyes; and, in its native haunts, this would seem to be most likely its usual mode of obtaining food. The specimen in the Gardens has been seen to eat grubs and very young mice, as well as the two kinds of food specified above. He seems to be very fond of water; not only drinking it, but bubbling and splashing in it with his beak. Mr. Newton says that the Kiwi appeared to him to trust more to the sense of smelling than that of sight; "the frequent touching of the walls and ground with its beak and sniffling, make me

* 66 Zoologist," p. 3415.

think," he observes, "that the Kiwi uses that appendage as a blind man uses his stick, not to support his body, but to reconnoitre his path."*

Mr. Yarrell first referred the Apteryx to what appears to be its true place in the system.† He refers it to the Struthious birds, and points out the decidedly rasorial nature of its legs. He remarks that the bill is grooved on each side throughout its length, and that the nostrils are pierced on each side at the end of this groove; that the apertures are elongated and covered by a membrane so suspended on the outside of each of them like a valve, that the slightest pressure against the outer surface would render the nostrils impervious and effectually defend and cover them. The beak is bony-looking, and scratched like that of a Rook,—a bird which, like the Apteryx, searches for worms and grubs in the loose soil. It has been said that it excavates deep holes in the ground in the form of a chamber, and deposits its eggs in a nest of dried fern and grasses. Mr. Wolley observes, however, that the specimen in the Gardens has never been seen to use its feet in scratching the ground, and that the long beak would probably also be much in the way if it attempted to do so. He thinks it more likely that it makes its lair in a snug corner of a good thick cover, such as the dense fern-thickets of New Zealand abundantly afford.

An egg of this bird, exhibited by Professor Owen at the Zoological Society in 1852, and figured in the "Illustrated Proceedings" of that Society, is nearly five inches long, and of a dull, dirty, greyish white. An embryo chick was also exhibited from a second egg, which showed that the young bird must be excluded, unusually well developed, and covered with a complete clothing very like that of the parent, and * "Zoologist," p. 3610.

+ "Trans. Zool. Soc." vol. i. p. 72.

capable, from its earliest exclusion, of using its limbs and beak for its own safety and support: the little wing-rudiments had their terminal hook.

We may here refer to the egg of a bird, which was obtained by the master of a merchantman from the natives of Madagascar in 1850. One of these eggs was found in the bed of a torrent amongst the débris brought down by the waters, another had been used as a vessel. These eggs were double the length of those of the ostrich. M. Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire estimated that the largest of them would contain ten quarts and more; that is to say, the contents of nearly six eggs of the ostrich, sixteen of the cassowary, 148 of the hen, or 50,000 of the humming-bird. A few fragments of the bones were also found. The French naturalist has called the Brobdignagian Depositor of these eggs Epyornis maximus.* Professor Owen has shown, however, from a comparison of similar bones that the Moa, or Dinornis giganteus of New Zealand, was larger than his Madagascar cousin, though both of them may have been double the size of the cassowary. Eggs are not to be depended on as objects from which to compare the relative size of birds. The egg of the Apteryx, that of the curious mound-raising genus Megapodius, and others which might be mentioned, are out of all comparison large when contrasted with the birds themselves.

* aixùs, lofty; agus, a bird.

A. W.

SCENES IN HISPANIOLA.

VI. THE SEPULCHRE.

Ir was scarcely dawn when the two friends, having partaken of a frugal meal, left the ajoupa and the sleepers, saddled their horses, and betook themselves to the mountain. There was a peak of remarkable prominence not far off, whither Gomez wished to arrive before sunrise, on account of the grand prospect which it commanded, as it was one of the loftiest summits of the Serico chain. They pushed hard, and had the satisfaction of scaling the peak before the sun had appeared, though the brightening glories of the eastern sky announced that he was at hand.

No words can describe the sublimity of a cloudless sunrise, viewed from an elevated mountainous region in the tropics. Nothing in Europe can be compared with it: the elevation, the expanse of landscape, may be, indeed, attained; but the gorgeous vegetation, the glowing hues with which all nature is painted, the magnificence of the ever-verdant forest, the sky suffused, saturated, as it were, with radiance, the rich profusion and beauty of animal and insect life, have no rival in the temperate zone: those only who have been privileged to enjoy the sight can appreciate it, and to such the memory of it is ineffaceable.

"You have travelled, Don Carlos; you tell me you are familiar with mountain scenery; say, have you seen many scenes equal to this?"

"Never," answered the Spaniard, after he had gazed for some minutes on the vast expanse before him. "I have visited the Pyrenees, and have looked over the mountainchains of Catalonia, and taken in at one view the whole amphitheatre of Aragon. I have stood on the top of the Sierra Nevada, whence, surrounded by tremendous precipices