MUNI A. 281 



/T^HE Ringed Finch is the representative in the North-western and Northern portions of 

 JL the Australian Continent of the preceding species, to which it is closely allied, The 

 late Mr. T. H. Bowyer-Bower and Mr. E. J. Cairn obtained a number of specimens near Derby, 

 North-western .Australia, in 1886. On the 2nd October, 1887, Mr. W. \\'. Froggatt, collecting 

 on behalf of the late Sir William Macleay, procured its nest and eggs near the head of the 

 Lennard River, and these I subsequently described at a meeting of the Linnean Society of 

 New South Wales,* and Mr. G. A. Keartland, while a member of the Calvert Exploring 

 E.Kpedition, procured examples near the junction of the Fitzroy and Margaret Rivers, and 

 obtained its nest and eggs. There are specimens also in the Australian Museum, collected in 

 different parts of the Northern Territory of South Australia. Mr. A. Zietz, the .Assistant Director 

 of the South Australian Museum, informs me that in a collection of birds' skins made by Mr. F. 

 Schultze in the Northern Territory, and received at the Museum in March, 1870, there were 

 eight of these Finches. Dr. E. Hartert has also recorded an adult female from Crawford's 

 Springs, in the same part of the continent. ! 



"SI. Octave Le Bon informs me that he took a large number of living birds to Antwerp m 

 1897. .\mong them were over two hundred of this species. He caught them at Goose Hill, 

 about twelve miles from W'yndham, North-western Australia. 



Mr. G. A. Keartland sends me the following note : — " Stuioptcva annulosa builds around ball- 

 like nest of dead grass strippings, rather coarse on the outside, but lined with ' silver grass.' The 

 first I saw was near the Fitzroy River, North-western Australia, in February, 1897. It was 

 placed in a suspended dead branch of a Eucalypt, about eight feet from the ground. It contained 

 five white eggs, similar in size to those of Tceiiiopygia castniwiis. Three other nests were found 

 in a species of thorny Acacia Bush, about three feet six inches in height ,■ two contained eggs, 

 but the third was scarcely finished. They were all built of the same material." 



The eggs are usually four or five in number for a sitting, oval in form, the shell being close- 

 grained, smooth and lustreless. They are white, or white with an almost imperceptible tinge of 

 blue. Three eggs in the Macleay Museum, at the University of Sydney, measure alike 0-55 x 

 0-44 inches. A set of four taken by Mr. G. A. Keartland, from a dome-shaped nest of dried 

 "rasses, in March 1897, near the junction of the Fitzroy and Margaret Rivers, North-western 

 Australia, and in which he caught the bird, measures : — Length (.\) o'55 x 0-4 inches; (B) 

 0-55 X 0-38 inches; (C) 0-54 x 0-4 inches ; (D) 0-55 x 0-4 inches. The egg of this Finch 

 is one of the smallest of all of our Australian Birds. 



C3erLt:LS :M:"Cri>TI-^, Hodgson. 



Munia castaneithorax. 



CHESTNUT-BREASTED FINCH. 

 Amadina caslaneothorax, Gould, Syn. Bds. Austr., Part II., (1837). 

 Donacola castaneothorax, Gould, Bds. Austr., fol. Vol. III., pi. 94(1843); id., Hand-bk. Bds. 



Austr., Vol. I., p. 426 (186-5). 

 Munia castaneithora.v, Sharpe, Cat. Bds. Brit. Mus., Vol. XIII., p. 340 (1890). 



Adult male — General colour above including the wings cinnamon-brorvn, the feathers oj the 

 hack having ashy tips; rump and iq^per tail-coverts orange-yellow ; central pair of tail feathers straw- 

 colour, the remainder broivn; forehead, crown of the head, nape and land neck ashy-grey, with brown 

 centres to most of the feathers ; lores, a narroiv line of feathers over the eye, sides of face, ear-coverts, 

 cheeks and throat blackish, with narrow brown shaft lines, which are more distinct on the ear-coverts; 



Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales. Vol. Ill,, 2nd Ser , p 14O (iSSSj. t Nov. Zool., Vol. .KlI., p. 238 (1905). 



