APTERYX OWENII juv.
(Lesser Grey Kiwi.)
Mr. Leadbeater appears to have been the first who did any thing respecting the neossology of this Apteryx; he exhibited the young of the bird at the Zoological Society's Meeting, January 12, 1864. The chick of which the present illustration is a faithful likeness was brought over to me in 1874, and came from the Ohono peaks near Greenstone Creek, Feramakou river; a second example, a trifle larger, was from the western slopes of Mount Cook, renowned for its glaciers, "whose snowy peak rises 13,200 feet above the sea, and is visible in clear weather at a distance of more than one hundred miles to the mariner approaching New Zealand" (Sir George Bowen, in Trollope's 'Australia and New Zealand'). The first could hardly have left the shell very long; and I have a series of eight, ascending like the steps of a ladder from this to the adult, figured by Mr. Keulemans, and placed next to Apteryx haastii ("as A. haastii is the nearest affine of A. owenii), in order that the reader may see for himself, as well as lithography can give it, the marked diiference between the two forms. The two illustrations thus afford the extremes of the chain.
Mr. Potts says ('Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,' vol. v. p. 187), "The young are well clothed when they leave the shell; with them the bill is not curved." This relates to the young of Apteryx australis;
