Vol. XVIII 

 1919 



•] Campbell, Additions to " H. L. White Collection." 261 



these blue feathers, in all cases the plumage being velvety-black 

 and the tail a dull grey-blue. Possibly the Black-and-White 

 Wrens on both islands have evolved, by isolation and climatic 

 causes, from a Blue-and-White form. Barrow Island being the 

 more isolated, it may be hazarded that edoiiardi is the older form, 

 and has lost the tendency to exhibit blue feathers." * 



The foregoing favours Mr. Mathews's contention that the two 

 insular forms of the Black-and-White Wren would prove to be 

 sub-specifically distinct, and the matter thus stands : — (i) Mr. 

 Tom Carter has re-discovered Quoy and Gaimard's long-lost M. 

 leucopterus on Dirk Hartog Island (see description by Mathews, 

 Austral Avian Record, iii., pp. 86, 87, together with coloured figures 

 of both sexes) ; and {2) that M. edouardi (Campbell), described 

 previously (1901) in the Victorian Naturalist (xvii., p. 203), and 

 again recently in The Emu (xvii., p. 177), may be considered a 

 geographic race or sub-species. 



Mr. Whitlock's full field notes concerning M. edouardi are found 

 in The Emu, xvii., p. 175, and his finding of the nest and eggs, 

 as described by Mr. H. L. White, in The Emu, ante, p. 127. Mr. 

 Carter's first finding of M. leucopterus is not without interest, and is 

 abridged from The Ibis, 1917 : — I landed on Dirk Hartog Island 

 on 25th April, 1916. Taking a turn with a .410 gun round the 

 vicinity of the station homestead next morning, a Wren that 

 appeared blue-and-white, with some female and immature birds, 

 was seen and followed some distance. A long shot at the male 

 had no result, except an impression was formed that it was the 

 wrong colour, which was doubtless caused by a glimpse of its 

 blue tail, and also that blue-and-white Wrens had been observed 

 on the Peron two days previously. As the manager, Mr. Llo^^d, 

 was going to the north end of the island next day with camels, 

 taking rations for men at out-camps and windmills, he kindly 

 offered to take me and a small outfit, and leave me to camp alone 

 some days at the well surrounded by scrub at the north-east 

 corner of the island. On 27th April we travelled about 26 miles 

 without seeing anything especial in the bird line. The following 

 day Mr. Lloyd (who was leading the string of camels, while I 

 " tailed" them) pointed to a Wren with white shoulders perched 

 on a bush some distance from the track. I dismounted, and fol- 

 lowed the bird a long way before I secured it — a real Black-and- 

 White Wren, and one of the main objects of the trip accomplished ! 

 The bird was exceedingly wild, and gave some idea of the difficulty 

 to be experienced in obtaining more specimens. The males were 

 invariably wild and difficult to approach, but the females and 

 immature males could always be " chirped " up, often to within 

 a yard, and would remain there, usually on the top of twigs of a 

 small bush. It was useless attempting to " chirp " up an old 

 male, but sometimes, when a party of females and young birds 



* Dirk Hartog Island and Barrow Island are about 400 miles apart, the former 

 being separated from the mainland by a passage barely a mile in width, while the 

 latter island is 30 miles from the mainland. — A. J. C. 



