.VESTS AXD EGGS OF AUSTHALIAN BIRDS. 517 



unwonted noise frightened the poor bird off tlie nest. She gave cue 

 hound over a log and in an mstant was out of sight. 



After coming out of the ferns on the siuldle of llie range tlie walking 

 was extremely rougli, through thick hazel, rank brackens, and other 

 obstructive scrub, not to mention sword and wire glasses ; besides, when 

 I left the birds and their nests behind, a reaction immediately set in, 

 fatigue and hunger making themselves painfully obvious. I hatl not 

 broken my fast for eight hours; as for my companion, he seemed to 

 thrive amazingly on the rarefied mountain air and tobacco smoke. He 

 appeared used to this sort of business. I reckoned with him that 1 

 could not proceed without something to eat. My spirits revived when 

 he informed me there was a hut close by where we would be welcome 

 for a meal. The sequel proved it, because the good wife, almost before 

 she had welcomed us, placed the kettle on a roaring fire. 



While wo refreshed ourselves darkness supervened, and wc were 

 still two miles or more from home, with a rugged gully to be traver.sed. 

 We stepped out merrily along the track 011 the saddle of the range and 

 entered the giUly, wliicii was awfully dark ; what little light the clouded 

 moon gave was now completely shut out by the thick foliage. Creep- 

 ing, crawhng and climbing over the rocks, stumps, &c., became the 

 order of the evening, and was a very awkward undertaking, not to say 

 dangerous. Several times I slipped and banged up against a tree stem, 

 which brought mc up all standing. On one very gre<asy patch I came a 

 regular '' cropper " on my back, and had literally to shake myself to- 

 gether again before 1 could rise, and was just in time to notice, through 

 the gloom, my partner perform a somersault into a wombat's hole. 

 But one peep at Natuie compensated for it all. Oiu-s was the rare 

 privilege to witness a living scene denied to thousands of our fellow- 

 beings. An opening in the trees presented a most lovely vista. From 

 our position wc looked down the gully upon the crowns of a mass of 

 tree-ferns. The clouds had now withdrawn from the face of the 

 moon, and, like a grand transformation scene, the flood of light streamed 

 in, giving all the graceful frondage and other foliage a most beautiful, 

 subdued, silvered appearance. 



After recovering, with a little difficulty, the nest wc had deposited 

 ill the morning near the track, and navigating the cumbersome stnicture 

 through the scrub, wc arrived at my friend's homo in time for a good 

 supper, none the worse for our day's Lyre Bird nesting, the success of 

 which exceeded our most sanguine expectations. 



The 'Victorian Lyre Bird mates in May or June. At that time the 

 males sing more lustil)- than at any other period, and, like human 

 beings, don their best frills for courting, their sombre plumage appear- 

 ing very sleek, while their graceful tail feathers are at their prime. 



They commence to build at once. During the peregrinations of the 

 forester, Mr. Robert Hughes, through the Dandenongs, he took par- 

 ticular notice of the foiuidations of a nest he saw on the 1st June, and, 

 passing the sjx)t on the 10th July, he observed that it was completed 

 and apparently ready for the egg. A still earlier commencement of 

 nest construction was noted in the same ranges by Messrs. R. C. 

 Chandler and H. Kendall, and reported in the " Victorian Naturalist, " 



