164 MELIPHAGID.E. 



it disagrees with Latham's original description of the latter species. The Coitus pamdoxiis of 

 Latham is tlie Great Wattled Honey-eater of Tasmania, figured and described by Gould many 

 years afterwards in his folio edition of the ']:'>irds of Australia' '■ under the name of Ant Jioclurra 

 inauris. In the text opposite to the plate of this species in his folio edition of the "Birds of Australia" 

 Gould gives it the same vernacular name, Wattled Honey-eater, as he does to Anthochara 

 carunculnta, on the following plate. This error he corrected in the Index to the volume in 

 which it is contained, distinguishing the Tasmanian species by the very appropriate and 

 distinctive vernacular name of Great Wattled Honey-eater. Unfortunately in his "Handbook 

 to the Birds of Australia" he omits the corrected name, and the same mistake occurs again as in 

 the text to his plates. 



Of the specimens in the Australian Museum collection. Mr. George Masters procured 

 examples near the Dee River, in March, 1867, and there is a large number of skins obtained by 

 Mr. Kendal Broadbent at Badger Head, in 1S79. 



Mr. R. X. .\tkinson writes me from Waratah, Mount Bischoff: — " In this district Anthoclucra 

 inauris is only met with in the thickly timbered open country. It frequents chiefly the Eucalypti 

 and is much sought after as a table delicacy. Its note is loud, harsh and guttural, and can be 

 heard a long distance away. I have been informed by kangaroo hunters that these birds pack 

 off and eat the fat which has been left on the kangaroo and wallaby skins, when they have been 

 spread out on bushes to dry. My uncle the Rev. H. D. Atkinson found a nest of this species at 

 Evandale. It was a large open nest of sticks and twigs, built in a tea-tree, and contained young 

 birds." 



Mr. Malcolm Harrison writes me: — "From mj' experience Anthochara inauris is principally 

 found in the nesting season in the higher midlands towards the Lake country. Nevertheless it 

 does occasionally breed in the low country, and I have seen the nests and taken eggs within a 

 few miles of Hobart. The nests were large open structures, composed of strips of bark and 

 small twigs bound together with wool, the latter material also being used as a lining. The egg 

 cavity is deep and large in proportion to the size of the bird. Two or three eggs are laid for a 

 sitting. A nest I took on the 28th August, at Nubeena Quarantine Ground, Brown's River 

 Road, within six miles of Hobart, contained two slightly incubated eggs. Another nest con- 

 taining two eggs, taken with the help of Mr. A. L. Butler, was found some three weeks later 

 about a hundred yards from the former. Both the nests referred to were placed in the tops of 

 gum saplings, the former about twenty-five feet and the latter about forty feet from the ground. 

 One nest I saw was built in a Casuarina quadrivalvis. As other nests were found by me from 

 which the young had flown in October, I take it that this species is an early breeder in comparison 

 with most birds of the same locality." 



The eggs are two or three in number for a sitting, oval in form, the shell being close 

 grained, smooth, and lustrous. They are of a salmon-bufT ground colour, over which is scattered 

 dots, spots, and small blotches of reddish-brown or purplish-red, intermingled with similar 

 underlying markings of purplish or bluish-grey, and predominating as usual on the larger end. 

 On some specimens the markings are very faint and have a blurred or smeared appearance, or 

 two or three of them are of a dark red, almost black. A set of two in the Australian Museum 

 collection, taken in September, 1885, measures: — Length (A) 1-37 x 0-94 inches; (B) 1-35 x 

 0-95 inches. Another set taken by Mr. G. K. Hinsby, near Hobart, on the 20th November, 1896, 

 measures: — Length (A) 1-23 x o-88 inches; (B) 1-27 x 0-93 inches. 



Young birds resemble the adults, but the margins of the feathers on the crown of the head 

 and hind neck are pale brown and the central dark-brown streaks are not so sharply defined, the 

 wattles are much smaller, and the under parts are less distinctly streaked, especially on the 

 lower sides of the breast. 



« Gould, Bds. Austr., fol. ed , Vol. IV , pi. 54 (1848). 



