300 ROBERTS, Birds of the CranUc Bcli (JilSr 



us, for lliey liad a beauty of ex])ression far exceedinjj; that in 

 our own hard-workinj,^ matter-of-fact world, thouj,di we person- 

 ally do not mistake literature for natural hist(jry. Everyone 

 knows that the (lold Finch is a thing of gold when he breaks 

 into glorious Right ; so, surely, this must have been a thought 

 behind the mind oi Vigors and Horsheld when they, in 1827, 

 looked u])on Rc(/itloides and chose the classical name .Ikanthis, 

 a Gold Finch, for their genus. Verily it must i)ain their spirit 

 to have their gold-coloured idol bearing the name Gcobasileus. 

 king of the world, coined in 1851. And even in these days their 

 poetic souls are so misunderstood that no man has, to our know- 

 ledge, contradicted the statement that Regulits means nothing 

 more than "a staff." Was it not also given to Re</iili(s, the 

 English Wren? Surely this Wren, beloved of English children 

 from time immemorial, was in their thoughts, and they rejoiced 

 that English children in distant lands should at least have some- 

 thing to call it to mind. All this may not be in strict keeping 

 with modern ornithology, l)ut it is the spirit in which we approach 

 it, and from which we have had great i)leasure. And these Small 

 I'rown P)irds are to us part of a greater scheme conceived by a 

 sublime mind, a scheme which cares for its children, and if life 

 is too hard changes them slightly, makes Liiieata into Xana, and 

 gives to Regnlo'idcs a chestnut tail, to make them fitted to be 

 happy wherever they are placed, bringing into being what is 

 termed by us mortals the Law of Representation. 



The Crimson Honeyeater, Myzomela satiguineolenta. — On a 

 warm November afternoon a little grey-brown bird Hew down 

 to a row of French beans that had just been watered, and hopped 

 and fluttered among the dripping leaves, giving little chirps of 

 keen enjoyment, until, quite drenched, it flew off to a peach tree 

 to preen and dry its feathers. The bird was the female Myco- 

 mela saiu/Klncolciito — the "blood-bird" of the v^ydney schoolboy 

 — and the sight was the more noteworthy because, compared 

 with the male bird, it is rarely that the female is seen at all, even 

 alknving for her lack of song and absence of bright colour. Her 

 throat .shows just a touch of the male bird's scarlet, clearly 

 seen as she sits on the nest with head and beak jKiinting a little 

 upwards. The nest re.sembles that of the Yellow-faced Honey- 

 eater {Mcliphaija chrysops) in shape, construction, and situation ; 

 but is .smaller and made largely of .shreds of fre.sh bark, which 

 give it a reddish colour. One of this year's nests was made in a 

 small pine ( Piints insignis), about 10 feet from the ground. The 

 young birds were fed partly on gnats and mos(|uito-like insects 

 by both i)arent birds, and were out of the nest by 17th October. 

 — H. WoLSTKNHOLME, R.A.O.U.. Wahroonga. Sydney. 



