xvi NESTS AND liGGS OF AUSTRALIAN BIRDS. 



original iuformation, not to mention tlirilling adventure, most mysteri- 

 ously disappeared. However, his son, Mr. C. A. White, is now 

 endeavouring from personal notes and private letters to publish a book 

 on the last adventurous trip. 



On account of Mr. White's devotion as a field ornithologist and 

 collector, and before all the bu'ds of this gi-eat Island Continent have been 

 discovered and named, it is hoped that some author will dedicate one 

 species at least to his memory. 



There have also been distinguished foreign field collectors to our 

 shores, namely : — Dr. Carl Liunholtz, whose interesting bird notes are 

 recorded in the account of his travels " Among Cannibals in Northern 

 Queensland ; " and Dr. Knut Dahl (both Norwegians), who more 

 recently visited the North-west and Northern Tenitory. 



I shall conclude my " cloud of witnesses " by naming two early 

 collectors, who met prematiu-e deaths at the liands of treacherous natives : 

 Johnson Dnimmond (already mentioned under Gould), who was killed 

 in Western Australia ; and F. Strange, of Sydney, who was murdered 

 by the aborigines in the Wide Bay district, Queensland, about July, 

 1846. He was one of Gould's collectors, and had just returned from 

 Eiuope by a vessel called the " Vimiera." An account of his tragic 

 death appeared in the " Sydney Homing Herald." 



Should I have overlooked names of other worthy forerimncrs in the 

 field, such omissions must be regarded as purely unintentional on my part, 

 or as caused by the absence of the necessary data; wliile of my own 

 immediate contemporaries I have nothing to say. Time alone, that 

 wondrous adjuster of relative merits and demerits, will impartially jvidge 

 us all. 



Jly votes of thanks. They are too numerous, and beyond the scope 

 of this introduction to be all enumerated, and it would be invidious even 

 to mention some of the many persons who have aided my work by signal 

 services in the field. But as the names of collectors and others appear 

 throughout this book, I hope that will be sufficient acknowledgment 

 for the respective notes or specimens they have been so good as to supply 

 me with. 



I take this opportunity, however, of e.xpressing my indebtedness to 

 the proprietors of " Tlie Australasian " for so persistently publishing for 

 many years my articles on " Some Australian Birds." Of coiuse these 

 articles, as they must necessarily have been, were merely sketches, but 

 sketches, nevertheless, which have done a great deal to popularize 



