in the British Museum, are different sexes, then both sexes have the spur. Body heavy. Wing-feathers soft. Supposed to be flightless. Secondaries longer than the primaries.
Colour : one dress blue-green ; beak red, with yellow tip ; legs red.
For further description vide :— Buller's Birds of New Zealand ; Gould's Birds of Australia; Owen, Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iii. p. 377.
Compare with Porphyrio.
Porphyrio.— Middle toe longer than tarsus ; body slender ; tibia feathered about three parts down to tarsus. Frontal extending beyond the eye. Wing pointed, sharp, and feathers hard ; toes longer, claws less curved than in the Notornithidse.
On the bend of the wing a sharp spur in some species, in one sex (query, in both ?).
Notornis alba, Pelzeln.
Hab. Norfolk Island, Lord Howe's Island ?
Differs from N. mantelli. Middle toe shorter than tarsus, hind toe short. Frontal plate going beyond the eye ; tibia feathered as in Porphyrio, not as in Notornis. Feathers of wing soft. Said to be flightless. Secondaries longer than primaries. Colour in one dress white. Legs (in ' Ibis '-plate) yellow, beak red ; but probably in the flesh both red, with yellow tip to beak. N ot so heavy in body as Notornis. On bend of wing a sharp spur (vide Miss Stone's plate in White's 'Voyage,' also his description as above). Miss Stone's plate differs from the ' Ibis '-plate in certain particulars. A tender regard for ornithic taxonomy causes me to leave this bird alone ; but the circum- stance of a Notornis out of New Zealand appears to me suspicious, and I consider this a very aberrant species in that genus !
Porphyrio stanleyi.
Hab. Lord Howe's Island ? or New Zealand.
Differs from Notornithidæ. Middle toe equal in length to tarsus. Tibia
