'A History of the Birds of New Zealand', 1888 by Sir Walter Lawry Buller is available from the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre at Victoria University of Wellington. Some of the images above were spot-cleaned and a few more examples were saved in this set (that's the majority from the publication). {The 2-volume series is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence}.
Homepage of NZTEC - "free online archive of New Zealand and Pacific Islands texts and heritage materials, which offers an ever expanding, fully searchable, set of images and full-text books, manuscripts and journals [..] contains over 2,600 texts (around 65,000 pages)" [via Armchair Aquarium Annex]
UPDATE: Definitely see Bookn3rd's posts (one & two) for background.
Well, those are certainly very fine, but surely no history of New Zealand birds could possibly be complete without a moa or two. What was Sir Walter thinking of? (Or did he simply lack suitable pictures?) Since it might amuse you: another bit of fantastical moa material for you (not written by me this time).
ReplyDeleteThere are, I seem to recall, pictures of Moa femurs or hip joints / pelvic girdles (maybe comparative pics - I didn't look closely) in there somewhere but I too was amazed that a 'history of nz birds' didn't show a Moa. There is a skeleton of a monster nz goose - something of a relative of the Moa I suspect - in Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember the monster goose well, with its massive leg bones.
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