322 MEXURID.E. 



mountain ; it was a very dark "place : to give you some idea of the light there, I gave six and a 

 half minutes exposure, using the same stop as I used for the Kite's nest forwarded you; the 

 latter picture I gave eight seconds. The nest is, as you see, situated on the rocky ground by 

 the side of a tree and a mass of dead fallen timber ; the place was so rough and rocky that there 

 was only a small space on which I could erect my camera, and I had to strap a piece of 

 sapling to the leg of the tripod to get it to stand at all, and to make up for the unevenness of the 

 ground. I had some difficulty to get a position to see the stop on my lens; however, it came 

 out fairly well. The next place visited was in the same locality, and was the nest situated about 

 eighteen feet up on the side of a precipice, and many feet to the top. We then crossed 

 the spur (all in thick dense scrub) to the left hand branch of Hill's Creek, and there took the 

 photograph of the one in the burnt out stump of a Tallow-wood tree. This nest was on the edge 

 of the scrub ; the light was much better there, and the sun shone through in places. This picture 

 I gave a little over one minute exposure, and the nest was about eleven feet from the ground ; it 

 was just ready for an egg. The other one on the ground contained a very peculiar shaped egg, 

 nearly round. I have a fine series of these eggs now, one in particular being a very light stone 

 colour. We spent a very pleasant day, but a very strong westerly wind was blowing, which made 

 bush travelling dangerous. We came across one monstrous tree that had just been blown down. 

 Menura sitperba builds in all sorts of positions. One nest was found on the top of a Grass-tree 

 (Xanthorrhoea sp.j In the breeding time the male bird sings out at intervals all through the 

 night. Usually when they are going through their corroboree, they go to their bare mound and 

 prance round, fanning and whisking their tail, which they make tremble again. They are 

 plentiful in these scrubs." 



Instances of the Lyre-bird living in semi-domestication, or in confinement, are not uncommon, 

 although the latter is far more so than the former. Only once, however, have I known the Lyre- 

 bird to have been successfully taken alive to Europe. From information and notes received from 

 M. Leon Jaubert, of North Sydney, I have extracted the following : — " Hearing from Mr. E. P. 

 Ramsay, Curator of the Australian Museum, Sydney, that a Mr. Rose, farmer of Webb's Creek, 

 near Wiseman's Ferry, on the Hawkesbury River, had a pair of tame Lyre-birds, I went up 

 there on a shooting expedition, and called at his place to see them. I found them running with 

 the fowls and perfectly tame. Mr. Rose informed me that he had several times taken young 

 birds from the nests, and after rearing them and letting them have the run of the bush with the 

 fowls, they all had mated with wild birds and forsook the place. The pair of birds then in his 

 possession had been hatched from eggs taken from the nests at the same time, and placed under 

 a domestic fowl, but he did not inform me of the length of period of incubation. These birds 

 were exceedingly tame, and would take curds out of the mouth of the farmer, or his daughter, 

 or eat anything out of their hands. Finally I purchased the birds, and stayed there four days 

 shooting in and about the neighbourhood, and then returned to Sydney with them. As I intended 

 shortly leaving with the Lyre-birds for France, I put an advertisement in the ' Sydney Morning 

 Herald,' offering to purchase twenty thousand live worms. These I succeeded in obtaining, and 

 placed about an equal number of each in twenty casks of good soil, and also purchased one 

 hundred weight of curds, which was placed in the cooling chamber. On the 21st of April, 1885, 

 I took the French steamer ' Sydney,' and Captain Pellegrin, the commander, gave me all possible 

 help to succeed in my attempt to take the birds alive to France. I fed the birds regularly every 

 day on about two pounds of curds, for this they would fly up on to my shoulders, and take it out 

 of my mouth, and placed half a barrel of fresh soil in their cage, from which they extracted the 

 worms as they required them, .^t that time the French steamers called at Mauritius, Bourbon 

 and the Seychelles, on their way to my birthplace, Marseilles. Just at day-break on the morning 

 prior to our arrival at the latter place, the female died from the effects of the great heat, while 

 passing through the Red Sea. The male bird was landed in splendid condition, and remained 

 or about a month at the .Acclimatization Society Gardens at Marseilles. I then made arrange- 



