SUPPLEMENT TO NESTS AND EGGS OP AUSTK. BIEDS NORTH. 1 9 



on which they were laid, the shell being dull and lustreless, and 

 having minute shallow pittings all over them ; they measure (A) 

 1-82 X 1-49 inch; (B) 1-9 x 1-6 inch. 



The range of this species extends over Eastern and Southern 

 Australia and Tasmania, although in the latter colony Gould 

 separated the species from C. funerens, under the name of C. 

 xaiUhonotus, but the specific characters are not constant, speci- 

 mens having been received from Tasmania that could not be 

 distinguished from the continental form, and Dr. Ramsay who 

 has examined one of Gould's types, states they ai'e identical. 



PoLYTELis ALEXANDRA, Gould. The Princess of Wales Parrakeet. 

 Gould, Handhk. Bds. Atistr., Vol. ii., 1865, sp. 407, p. 32. 



Much attention has recently been drawn to this the rarest of 

 all the Australian Psittaci. It was first discovered by Mr. F. G. 

 Waterliouse at Howell's Ponds, in Lat. about 17° S. and Long. 

 133° E. who accompanied Stuart, the well known Central Austra- 

 lian explorer in 1862. Gould described it in the following year 

 in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, dedicating it to the 

 Princess of Wales, and subsequently figuring it in his Supplement 

 to the Birds of Australia, in 1869. 



After a la^se of twenty-eight years since discovering this 

 species, Mr. M. Symonds Clark, of Adelaide, South Australia, 

 brought under the notice of the public, through the columns of 

 the South Australian Register of the 28th of August, 1890, the 

 existence of two living specimens of Polytelis alexaiidrce, which 

 had been taken from a nest in the hollow branch of a tree by 

 Mr. T. G. Magarey at " Crown Point," about fifty miles north of 

 "Charlotte Waters," in Lat. 25° 30' and Long. 133°, about six 

 hundred miles south from where the type specimens were obtained. 

 Later on Dr. E. C. Stirling, the Director of the Adelaide Museum, 

 who accompanied the Earl of Kintore, Governor of South Aus- 

 tralia, on his trip across the Continent from north to south in 

 1891, succeeded in obtaining two specimens a few miles north of 

 " Newcastle Waters," and towards the latter end of the same 

 year Mr. A. H. C. Zietz, the Assistant Director of the Adelaide 

 Museum, acquired the eggs of this species, one of which together 

 with a male sjDecimen of P. alexandrce, has recently been received 

 by the Trustees of the Australian Museum. 



The egg of P. alexandrcH is an ellipse in form, pure white, the 

 texture of the shell being very fine, and the surface slightly 

 glossy. Length 1'23 inch x 0*94 inch in breadth. 



The interior of Northern Central Australia constitutes the 

 habitat of this species. 



