^°'- .^-1 Prom Magazines, &c. 43 



in the leather at the time of growth — that is, in the birds at the 

 moult ; lor the dilterences observable in bucls from diflerent 

 localities in breeding plumage may be due to climate acting merely 

 on the feather of the individual, but leaving the sjjecies as such 

 unaltered. No doubt the conscientious apj)lication of Dr. Dwight's 

 test would considerably reduce the number of American sub-species, 

 and so go to obviate the need for trinomial nomenclature. This 

 is a road on which we in Australia have not yet travelled so far 

 as oiu" American cousins, l)ut it is well to be wise in time. 



BiRD-KiNDNESS. — The Rev. R. (i. Pearse (Natal), writing to a 

 recent number of The Spectatoy, states : — " 1 beg to give you an 

 account of bird-kindness witnessed by a doctor, another minister, 

 and myself here in Durban. During an exceptionally heavy tropical 

 rain, three weeks ago, two Duclcsof the common half-bred native and 

 Bombay \ariety got washed in the flood down the I'mgeni River, 

 which flows through the Town Gardens. The Ducks both got 

 entangled in the barbed wire and wire netting which crosses from 

 bank to bank. One managed by much flapping of wings to 

 extricate itself ; the other seemed, hcnvever, to be on the point of 

 drowning, when a large male Ostrich stalked out of the bush and 

 waded into the river, lifted it bodily out of the water, and carried 

 it ashore by one wing. The Duck was not badly hurt, but its 

 rescuer was severely torn on its thigh muscles by the barbed wire. 

 I may mention that this all is the more remarkable as the Ostrich, 

 with rare exceptions, buries its head in the sand during a storm, 

 and will starve to death sooner than move." 



Singular Site for a Satin-Bird's Bower. — Writing in The 

 Geelong Naturalist (Dec, 1904) Mr. J. F. Mulder states: — "A small 

 party of Satin Bower-Birds {Ptilonorhviichiis violacens) has built a 

 bower in a pine tree over my kitchen at Bambra (loth October. 1892). 

 They are very interesting, and amusing in their habits, and make 

 such strange noises, sometimes like a cat snarling, anci sometimes 

 a whirring noise like an Owl ; then again they imitate other birds 

 so closely as to deceive anyone who chd not know, and make one 

 tliink there were five or six different birds in tlie tree. When 

 watching these birds they were continually jumping about from 

 one branch to another, and appeared to be playing together. As 

 there were no black ones among them, I concluded that most of 

 the birds were females or young males. The bower, which had a 

 l)assage right through it, was composed of a lot of broken pine 

 branches, laid across other limbs of the tree and built close to tlie 

 trunk. In flying from one j)lace to another the birds appeared to 

 move off in a succession of small flights. Two or three of the 

 flock fly to a neighbouring tree ; as soon as they alight, two or 

 three more start. The first lot go on, then two or three more fly 

 out from the first tree. The birds in the second tree go to the 



