"Apteryx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foetal structures are minute in size, and never cut the gum, but are reabsorbed without ever coming into use, while no other teeth succeed them or represent them in the adult condition of those animals. The mammary glands of all male beasts constitute another example, as also does the wing of the apteryx—a New Zealand bird utterly incapable of flight, and with the wing in a quite rudimentary condition (whence the name of the animal). Yet this rudimentary wing contains bones which are miniature representatives ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... once intended for the capital of New Zealand. When the large and splendidly-built city of Dunedin, Otago, was a barren bush, haunted only by the "morepork" and the apteryx, Russell was humming with vitality, her harbour busy with fleets of ships, principally whalers, who found it the most convenient calling-place in the southern temperate zone. Terrible scenes were enacted about its "blackguard beach," orgies of wild debauchery ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... scales. Birds, too, by having their mouth parts encased in a horny bill seem to be debarred from wearing noses. And yet there is one primeval fowl, most ancient of all the feathered families, which has come near it. I mean the apteryx, that eccentric, wingless recluse which hides itself in the scrub jungles of New Zealand. Its nostrils, unlike those of every other bird, are at the tip of its beak, which is swollen and sensitive; and Dr. Buller says ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the same regions, yet in the caves of Brazil extinct species of nearly all the territorial quadrupeds now inhabiting this region occur. The Australian caverns contain fossil bones of a large extinct kangaroo. In New Zealand the wingless apteryx is still found in the wilds, and the caves of that country show us that it was preceded by other wingless birds of gigantic stature; among them the moa, which, when alive, must have stood about thirteen or fourteen feet high. ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston |
