Vol.^XXL] ..yy,^. TimCs" Oil Johu Could. 123 



small work which he modestly terms ./;/ Introduction to the 

 Birds of .Instralia — in fact, an appendix to his great work, in 

 which he condenses into a small compass a general outline of 

 Australian ornithology, adding to it some details relative to his 

 own journcyings, and an aesthetic survey of nature as presented 

 by forests, flowers, watercourses, droughts, inundations, tem- 

 perature and climate, interspersed by groupings of birds, insects, 

 and quadrupeds — a picture so simple, and yet so grajjhic, as to 

 lead us io regret that a full work on the "Impressions of 

 Australia on the Senses" has not issued from the pen of this 

 philosophical ornithologist. 



The following i)assage we cpiote from the "Introduction": — 



"Upon taking- a general view of the Australian ornithology, we 

 find no species of vulture, only one typical eagle, and, indeed, a re- 

 markable deficiency in the number of the species of its birds of prey, 

 with the exception of the nocturnal owls, among which the species 

 belonging- to the restricted genus Strix are more numerous than in 

 any other part of the world — a circumstance w^hich is probably 

 attributable to the great abundance of small quadrupeds, most of 

 which are nocturnal in their habits. Among the perching birds there 

 is a great excess in the msedivorae, of the ffranivorae, and of the 

 psittac'dae (parrot tribe). The latter tribe of birds is more numerous 

 in Australia than in any other part of the world, and forms four 

 great groups, amounting to nearly 60 species. Of the rasorial forms, 

 while the pigeons and hemipodes are numerous, the larger and 

 typical gallinaceac are entirely wanting, their only representatives 

 being a few species of coturnix and synokus (partridges). The gralla- 

 torial birds are about equal in number to those of other countries; 

 and among the water birds the true ducks are but few. while the 

 proccHaridac (albatrosses, puffins, petrels, etc.) which visit the coast 

 are in much greater abundance than in any other part of the world. 

 On a retrospect of the whole, we find a greater number of nocturnal 

 birds than is comprised in the ornithology of any other section of 

 the globe. I must not omit to mention, too, the extraordinary fecun- 

 dity which prevails in Australia, many of its smaller birds breeding 

 three or four times in a season, but laying fewer eggs in the early 

 spring, when insect life is less developed, and a greater number later 

 in the season, when the supply of insect food has become more 

 abundant. I have also some reason to believe that the young of 

 many species breed during the first season. . . . Another peculiar 

 feature connected with Austi-alian ornithology is that of its com- 

 prising several forms endowed with the power of sustaining and 

 enjoying life without a supply of water — for instance, the halcyons 

 (Kingfishers), which I found sustaining life and breeding on the 

 parched plains of the interior during the severe drought of 1888-9, 

 far removed from any water, the food of these birds being insects 

 and lizards." 



VVe may add that there are no woodj)eckers in Australia and 

 Polynesia. 



Returning from Australia, loaded with specimens, not only of 

 birds, but also of mammalia, struck down by his own gun, Mr. 

 Gould naturally bent his mind to the delineation and description 

 of some of the most important si)ecies of the latter. Hence in 

 1841 he announced his Mouoiiniph of the Kangaroos; but, on a 

 revision of his collection, he determined to give to the scientific 

 wcjrld a history of the Quadrupeds of Australia, as a companion 

 to that of the birds. In this work, now in the course of publi- 



