7C) Mr. T. Carter oti some [Ibis, 



main facts. A distressing (lrou<^lit had been prevailing for 

 two years, and I bad been obliged to move all my stock, 

 with much trouble and loss, from Point Cloates to the then 

 virgin country on the west side of the Exmouth Gulf, only 

 to have several hundred sheep poisoned by some unknown 

 shrub, soon after reaching there. So I returned to the west 

 side of the peninsula ranges with a native boy, in order to 

 open out a "soak " or black-fellow^s well, at which we had 

 obtained enough water for our horses when driving the 

 sheep up. The water was a few feet below the ground- 

 surface in a dense patch of scrub, on rocky ground. The 

 weather was intensely hot, and we found three putrid 

 poisoned dingoes in the water-hole, so had to dig it out 

 thoroughly before we could obtain any water to drink. 

 It was not long before the boy smashed one of his big toes 

 with a heavy sledge-hammer, so that he could not work, 

 and I was picking and shovelling alone, in a very bad 

 temper, when 1 heard some extraordinary chuckling noises 

 in the scrub where the native was nursing his injured toe, 

 so called out to him : '' If you cannot work you need not 

 make such idiotic noises " ; when he rej)lied, "• That not me, 

 that a bird." So I jumped out of the hole (o see what it 

 was, and shot it, with my onl}^ firearm at the time — a '450 

 Colt's revolver — as it was creeping about in the scrub. 

 It seemed to me to tally with Clilamijdera guttata, according 

 to Gould's Handbook, which, as usual, I had with me, when 

 camping out. The bird of course was badly smashed, but 

 I sent what was left of its skin to the Melbourne Museum 

 for identification ; they informed me that only a mass of loose 

 feathers had arrived. After I had finished mnking the well, 

 where there was a splendid sup[)ly of good water, I moved 

 most of my sheep back there ; but although I was camped 

 there for several weeks, in which time I was constantly 

 tramping the surrounding ranges, in order to shoot 

 kangaroo, emn, etc., for food, no more of the birds 

 were seen ; but when back at Point C'loates again in April 

 the same year, i saw one of them in a deep rocky gorge 

 among dense fig-trees, but did not shoot at it, hoping that 



