°go7 'J Notes and Noitces. 200 



Report on the British Museum, 1906.— Donations from 

 Australia. — Mr. Bernard Woodward presented 52 birds from 

 south-west Australia (including 5 species new to the collection). 

 Mr. W. E. Balston presented 374 birds from south-west Aus- 

 tralia, collected by Mr. T. Shortridge. Mr. A. J. North pre- 

 sented 98 eggs. 



Useful Eagles. — At the November meeting of the South 

 Australian Ornithological Association the value of the common 

 Wedge-tailed Eagle ( Uroa'etus audax) as a rabbit-destroyer was 

 discussed. The members fully confirmed a report by the 

 Inspector of Fisheries that great numbers of rabbits were killed 

 by a single pair of these birds for food while rearing their brood 

 of young. It was contended that, although these birds occa- 

 sionally secured a young lamb, the amount of good they did 

 fully compensated for this, and in the majority of cases it was 

 thought that they killed only weakly lambs, or those that had 

 lost their mothers and would eventually die. In many cases 

 they picked up the dead carcasses of freshly dropped lambs. It 

 was represented that infinitely more sheep and lambs died from 

 the effects of shortage of food supplies, under the influence of 

 rabbits, than were killed by the Eagles, whose energies in 

 destroying the rodents increased the possibilities of grass 

 fodder, and therefore it behoved the farmers to protect the 

 Eagles as useful birds. 



The exhibiting of a crocodile's &g^ {Crocodiliis porosiis) at the 

 last quarterly dinner of the Bird Observers' Club brought forth 

 the following remarks from Mr. A. Mattingley : — " It will be 

 observed that the contour of a crocodile's o.^^ is similar to that 

 of the mound-building birds, and it is interesting to observe here 

 that the crocodile is a mound-builder and lays its eggs in a 

 mound after the method adopted by the mound-building birds. 

 The apices or ends of the &^^ of the crocodile and of the 

 mound-building birds in Australia are similar in shape, both 

 ends of the q%^ being of uniform size. Thus, if we accept the 

 dictum that birds have descended from some reptilian ancestor, 

 and are merely extremely modified and aberrant reptilian types 

 — glorified reptiles, in other words — that birds' ancestors were 

 four-footed creatures which gradually metamorphosed into 

 feathered bipeds, the fore legs becoming specialised, forming 

 wings, &c., then the foregoing remarks of the similarity of 

 nesting and the contour of the eggs show something in common 

 between the crocodiles and birds. Furthermore, the powder- 

 down found on the bodies of Herons and other birds is no doubt 

 the relic of this affinity. If one accepts the theory that the skin 

 of reptilian ancestors of birds gradually evolved a down, and 

 later on feathers, or elongated scales, then it seems probable that 

 this powder-down is the connecting link." 



