80 ]\Ir. G. M. Mathews on a recent 



A prior investigator of north Queensland, wliose collec- 

 tions were allowed to be submerged in the National Collec- 

 tion without study, was Matthew Flinders. 



Since Macgillivray's time many collectors have touched 

 at Cape York, each adding a bird or two to the avifauna, 

 without any very startling results. Such are : Ramsay or his 

 collector Broadbent, d'Albertis, Meek, Rogers, McLennan, 

 Macgillivray, Masters, Barnard, Jardine, White, Kemp, 

 and finally Cockerell and Thorpe. The last-named may 

 be here first noted. These collectors, who must stand in 

 the forefront of careful and accurate workers as regards the 

 acquisition and preparation of bird-skins, thought that by 

 the falsification of localities they might obtain better prices 

 for their goods ; they therefore made an expedition to some 

 islands to the north of Australia, probabh'^ tlic Aru group, 

 where they made a magnificent collection, and then palmed 

 these off mixed with true Cape York birds as having been 

 all procured at Cape York. This collection, ])urchased by 

 Messrs. Godman and Salvin, and later presented to the British 

 Museum, has been a source of endless trouble, and the only 

 scientific course would have been to have rejected it entirely. 



The other collectors named have added species after 

 species to the Cape Y^ork fauna, so that it may reasonably be 

 said to be well known. The latest collectors have each 

 found little to add, jNlcLcnnan's chief finds being a small 

 subspecies of Dacelo gigas and a form of the New Guinea 

 Cracticus menialis. This latter Kemp again collected, while 

 his most interesting discovery was the small Robin 1 have 

 named Kempiella keuqn. 



The consideration of all these collections shows them to 

 liave a strong New Guinea element and to have no really 

 remarkable forms; all the New Guinea species generally 

 occur on the shores opposite, and the Cape York forms are 

 slightly differentiated as subspecies only. 



This is what one would anticipate when it is remembered 

 that " a slight elevation of less than ten fathoms would now 

 serve to connect the shores" of New Guinea and Cape York 

 (Hedley, Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. 1899, p. 396j. 



