458 Mr. C. Ingram on the Birds of 



XVIII. — On the Birds oflnherman Station, North Queensland. 

 By CoLLiNGWooD Ingram, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. 



(Plate IX.) 



Early in 1907 my father arranged that Mr. Stalker should 

 transfer his labours from Alexandra, in Northern Territory, 

 South Australia — where lie had been making exhaustive 

 collections of birds and mamna^ls — to Inkerman, another 

 cattle-station belonging to the same owners in North 

 Queensland. Before describing the excellent series of birds 

 procured at the latter place, I had hoped to be able to 

 supplement my first paper (' Ibis/ 1907, p. 387) by the 

 description of a further consignment of skins from Alexandra ; 

 but although the case containing them was dispatched more 

 than eighteen months ago, owing to floods and other hind- 

 rances it has not yet reached its destination. 



The Inkerman collection is very extensive, and no fewer 

 than ninety-three species are represented in it, of which 

 two (Neositta maynirostris and Sphecotheres stalkeri) are new 

 to science. 



Unfortunately Mr. Stalker has not supplied us with even 

 a rough description of the locality in which he worked ; but 

 as I spent a fortnight at this station when in Australia 

 some years ago, I am to a certain extent able to remedy this 

 omission from my own journal. However, as I was there 

 towards the end of an exceptionally long and severe drought, 

 I probably saw the country under somewhat different con- 

 ditions, while the phenomenal aridity no doubt explained the 

 extreme paucity of bird-life noticed at the time of my visit. 

 Whether Mr. Stalker purposely refrained from collecting 

 the larger birds I do not know, but when I was at Inkerman 

 in July and early August 1902, it was certainly the large 

 forms that were then most commonly encountered — indeed, 

 the locality seemed to be almost entirely deserted by the 

 smaller passerine species. It may perhaps be of interest 

 to enumerate here the few birds observed by me and not 

 procured by Mr. Stalker. 



