484 BIRDS OF AUSTKAIJA. 



Sp. 295. POMATOSTOMUS RUFICEPS, Ilartlaub. 



Chestnut-crowned Pomatorhinus. 

 Pomatorhinus ruficeps, Hartl. in Cabanis's Journ. fiir Orn., vol. i. p. 21. 



Pomatorhinus ruficeps, Gould, Birds of Australia, foL, Supple- 

 ment, pi. 



When I visited South Australia in 1838 the colony was in 

 its infancy, and the city of Adelaide a chaotic jumble of sheds 

 and mud huts, with trees growing here and there in the newly 

 marked-out streets and squares. Among these trees Parrakeets 

 of various kinds, and Honey-eaters still more numerous, were 

 busily occupied in search of food or otherwise engaged ; here 

 and there also might be seen groups of newly-arrived emi- 

 grants, both English and Irish, who had chosen this distant 

 country for their future home ; groups of Germans, too, whose 

 fatherland no longer offered opportunities for enterprise, were 

 dotted about the country busily engaged in constructing their 

 little villages and getting their gardens under cultivation. It 

 was one of these German emigrants who, inspired by the 

 works of nature with which he was so profusely surrounded, 

 employed some of his leisure hours in collecting the birds 

 which came under his notice and in transmitting them to the 

 Museum at Bremen. Among the birds so collected and trans- 

 mitted was the present new and very beautiful Pomatostomiis, 

 which Dr. Ilartlaub has the merit of first describing. Since 

 that period the bird has been discovered in other parts of 

 Austraha, and I am indebted to Professor M'Coy for fine ex- 

 amples procured in the interior of Victoria. 



" Of this fine and typical species," says Dr. Hartlaub, "the 

 Bremen Collection received two examples, scarcely differing 

 in colour, in a collection of South Australian birds sent from 

 Adelaide. It is remarkable that the bird escaped the re- 

 searches of Mr. Gould and his collectors, and one cannot help 

 imagining that it must have recently arrived from some part 



