ACANTHOGENYS. 159 



nests are generally built in the outermost branches of a myall, and I have taken them with 

 eggs in August and September." 



In May, 1902, Mr. Tom Carter wrote me as follows from Point Cloates, North-western 

 Australia: — " Acaiithogenys nifigularis is mostly a winter visitor here, but its peculiar gurgling 

 notes may also be heard in the thickets in summer. It is rather shy in habits, and occurs more 

 often in the mangroves." 



Mr. C. G. Gibson also sends me the following notes from Western Australia: — "I found 

 several nests of Acantlwgenys rufigulavis at Broad Arrow, in September, 1902, but in every instance 

 with young. They were built in the hanging branches of a niulga or Casiiarina, about ten feet 

 from the ground. One nest contained two young ones and an addled egg. At the latter end of 

 August and in September, 1903, at Lake Austin, this species appeared to have just finished 

 breeding, as I saw a number of young birds about. At Tuckanarra on the 24th October 

 following, I found a nest with two fresh eggs, but this was exceptionally late. In the vicinity of 

 the Mount Margaret Goldfield, Erliston District, I found during 1905, the following nests: — 

 On the 26th June, a nest in twigs of soft mulga with one egg. Two nests on the 24th July, 

 built in prickly mulgas with two, and three fresh eggs, and another just completed from which 

 I took two eggs four days later. Nests were also found on the 26th July with two fresh eggs 

 in each, another on the gth August building, and one on the 15th August with two eggs much 

 incubated. These nests varied in height from three to ten feet from the ground, two being built 

 in soft mulgas, the remainder in prickly mulgas." 



Writing in 1.S84 in the "Catalogue of Birds in the British ^luseum,"- Dr. Gadow remarks 

 of this species: — "Half the number of specimens examined by me have the terminal half of the 

 bristles foxy-yellow, this cannot however be a sexual character, as it is independent of size and 

 age." An examination of twenty-five skins now before me of different sexes and age, obtained 

 n Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia, show that 

 the yellow spines are present more or less in twenty of them, but that they are not confined to the 

 terminal half, some having them entirely yellow, others the upper half, or the basal portion; in 

 one specimen from Armidale, New South Wales a few of the spines are distinctly yellow on one 

 side only, the remainder of them and those on the other side pure white. Of those specimens 

 having the spines pure white, four are adults, and one a young bird, the latter obtained near 

 Port Augusta, South Australia. 



Nests of this species in the Australian Museum collection, taken by the late Mr. K. H. 

 Bennett at Mossgiel, are round cup-shaped and somewhat scanty structures, composed of 

 long grasses and plant stalks, the latter bent into position when green and all held together with 

 spiders' webs, and are attached at the rim to thin forked branches. A peculiarity in the nests 

 of this species is that in many of them the grasses and stalks are not worked in horizontally 

 around the structure, but perpendicularly, or obliquely from the rim to the bottom of the nest 

 where they cross and recross each other. A nest taken by Mr. Edward Lord Ramsay at 

 W'attagoona, New South Wales, is formed throughout of a fine wiry green vine held together 

 with spiders' web. An average nest measures externally four inches in diameter by two inches 

 and a half in depth, the inner cup measuring three inches in diameter by two inches in depth. 



Eggs usually two, sometimes three in number for a sitting, ox'al or elongate-oval in form, 

 the shell being close-grained, smooth, and slightly lustrous. In ground colour they vary from a 

 pale yellowish-white to a creamy-brown, and are frequently of a darker shade on the larger end; 

 they are somewhat sparingly spotted and blotched with umber-brown, or sepia and underlying 

 markings of dull bluish-grey. Some specimens have the markings uniformly distributed 

 over the shell, but as a rule they predominate or are confined almost entirely to the thicker end 



• Gadow, Cat. Bds. Brit Mus., Vol. IX , p. 266 (1S84). 



