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Updated: May 5, 2025
Each man has got his little parcel of bread or biscuit and meat, tied up firmly in flax, and fastened to his belt; but besides this, the bush is affording us other kinds of tucker. Katipo killed a kiwi in the course of our morning's hunt, and this bird is now being skinned, cut up, and roasted on sticks.
Then, rising erect, he raised one hand to the full extent of his arm, bending the fingers so as to imitate the shape of a bird's head, pressed his head against his arm, placed the left arm close to his body and a little forward, and then began to stalk about slowly. "Moa, moa," he said, dropping his arm again, and pointing to the eggs, "Kiwi, kiwi." "Kiwi, kiwi," said Jem.
I first drew them a typical Belgian officer with lots of Medals which brought forth the remark that he "must have been through the South African Campaign!" When I got to his boots, which I did with a good high light down the centre, someone called out "Don't forget the Cherry Blossom boot polish, Miss." "What price, Kiwi?" etc.
The sportsmen found whole coveys of the kiwi, which are scarce in districts frequented by the Maories; the native dogs drive them away to the shelter of these inaccessible forests. They were an abundant source of nourishing food to our travelers. Paganel also had the good fortune to espy, in a thicket, a pair of gigantic birds; his instinct as a naturalist was awakened.
The species is one of many similar kinds that lived in Australia and New Zealand ages ago. Their remains are found in abundance, but the kiwi is the last species now living. It has a long, sharp bill and hair-like feathers. A full-grown bird is about the size of a bantam fowl. One of the more beautiful birds is a dull green parrot, the kea.
When he "feels" a piece of gum with his rod he needs only to use his pick to capture it. For many years about a million dollars' worth of kauri gum was thus obtained each year. The lumps vary in size from that of a hen's egg to masses weighing several pounds. There are also some strange animals in New Zealand. One curious creature is a bird without wings the kiwi.
The other group of Cretaceous birds, of the Hesperornis type, show an actual degeneration of the power of flight through adaptation to an environment in which it was not needed, as happened, later, in the kiwi of New Zealand, and is happening in the case of the barn-yard fowl. These birds had become divers.
Yet the making of such ordinary clothing was simple indeed compared to the manufacture of a chief's full dress mat of kiwi feathers. Many of these mantles, whether of flax, feathers or dog-skin, were quaintly beautiful as well as warm and waterproof. Nor did Maori skill confine itself to ornamenting the clothing of man. The human skin supplied a fresh and peculiar field for durable decoration.
Others of them are, no doubt, honest victims of that illusion of progress to which we are all more or less subject to that ingrained belief that all evolution is upward and that the latest thing must necessarily be the best. They forget that the same process which has relieved man of his tail has deprived the snake of his legs and the kiwi of his wings.
The gigantic, wingless Moas allied to the ostrich and the cassawary had grown up there, and were the masters of the situation. There were many species of these one of great height one fourth taller than the biggest known ostrich; others with short legs of monstrous thickness and strength. Allied to these are the four species of Kiwi or apteryx, still existing there.
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