242 ROBERTS, Prmce Edzvard's Lyre -Bird. [Tii A^rii 



Prince Edward's Lyre-Bird at Home 



By SrENCER ROP>ERTS, M.B., R.A.O.U., Stanthorpe, 

 Queensland. 



During 1915, I came to live, for family reasons, in this high- 

 land district of southern Queensland, known to dwellers therein 

 as the Granite Belt. As the train breasts the height and enters 

 it at Dalveen, the traveller on the weary trip from Brisbane to 

 Sydney takes a few deep breaths of appreciably different air; he 

 leaves it and the Queensland train, with a sigh of relief an hour 

 and a half later at Wallangarra. This is all: otherwise it is re- 

 mote as Timbuctoo. Roughly a hundred miles away, as the 

 crow would fly, is the sea at Point Danger, where New South 

 Wales and Queensland waters meet, and the land border com- 

 mences. Running almost due west along the McPherson and 

 Main Dividing Ranges, the border meets this strange outcrop, 

 senses the difference, and swerves due south ; it feels at the edge 

 for 20 miles, crawls over a small part, and then turns west again 

 to cut boldly across it. I refer in detail to this man-made land 

 border, for it is curiously and inextricably interwoven with the 

 borders of the range of three Lyre-Birds (Meniira albcrti, M. 

 novcE-hollandice, and M. edzvardi) which make up the family 

 Meniiridae. 



This Granite Belt, in itself a geographical entity and undoubt- 

 edly the north-west corner of the Kingdom of Lyre-tails in Aus- 

 tralia, is a point one might almost say where three empires meet : 

 on its north the Darling Downs black soil fringed with sand; 

 eastwards, the rough country of the head waters of the Clarence 

 clad in sub-tropical scrub, and away west, the heated Inglewood- 

 Goondiwindi hinterland. Towards this western area the waters 

 of the belt How to form a headwater for the great Murray sys- 

 tem. To the south, the granite overflows into New South Wales, 

 and is traceable in the New England tableland far beyond the 

 range of the bird under consideration, throwing out eastwards 

 bastions which overlook the very coastal ranges. Again I apolo- 

 gi.se for these details, but even the bastions play their part in the 

 story, as it is along them that the highland bird makes contact 

 with the lowland. The special tojiography of the country so far 

 as it concerns the Mcnura will be related later. Aleanwhile, let 

 it be said that if one would expect such a spot, isolated and 

 towering 2000 feet above its neighbours, to contain isolated and 

 rare objects of natural history, disappointment will not be met. 

 Undoubtedly there are wombats of great size, the Platypus 

 (Ornithorhynclins), the Spiny Ant-eater (Echidna) . and the 

 Lyre-Bird. Surely four strange enough creatures. 



My first introduction to the Lyre-Bird was .soon after my ar- 

 rival as numerous tails adorned, horrlbilc dictn, the hruses of 

 many of my patients, distracted my attention, and wiled away 

 many a tedious hour of waiting. I was never tired of looking at 



