^''le^i^^ J ROBERTS, Prince Edward's Lyre -Bird. 249 



thing the feet come in contact with, in order to get fresh im- 

 petus. Standing on a rock, the bird, vivid, fascinating, looks the 

 l)ersonitication of grace, much more chic than her mate under 

 similar circumstances : there is a style about the whole thing, 

 and in keeping with it is the movement to which I have referred 

 as extraordinary. I was struck dumb when first I saw it in per- 

 fection, and it bit into m,y memory. The ordinary domestic hen 

 of childhood should be called to mind : she was on one side of 

 the fence, and you gave her chickens a start on the other; dirt, 

 noise and vulgar scratching filled the air. Not .so this belle. 

 She may be standing on a heap of rubbish, and she may obey the 

 same instinct as the hen, but instead of scratching she lifts the 

 rubbish (which has been specially mentioned as light and loose) 

 beautifully as with a hand, taking up a full grasp, and placing it 

 on one side. The delicacy is astounding, and I have never seen 

 any other bird do it. Many times the nature of the scratchings 

 have been a puzzle. In my early days as a student in Sydney, 

 the enormous power of the bird in turning over rocks had been 

 graphically described to me : I could almost hear them crash. 

 A. G. Campbell (Mathews' Birds of ■.lustralia, vol. 7, page 404) 

 says : "The birds love to work on a bank where they can shoot 

 their scratchings down hill." Neither of these statements holds 

 good so far as this bird is concerned, and after looking carefully 

 I have never seen one rock displaced, though the place is simply 

 paved with them, and the ground beneath alive with insects. 

 Further, hundreds of extensive scratchings have been examined. 

 They are not haphazard, but exactly like a garden mulch skil- 

 fully loosened and having no mark of rake or fork. In the soft 

 moss-grown soaks, bill marks are plainly visible, and this is a 

 position much beloved by the birds in their search for food. In 

 handling litter they prefer that which is dry, and not deep. I 

 have never seen a hole scratched out, and this combined with 

 actual observation, has made me come to the conclusion that 

 scratching is a little used movement in their search for food, 

 which consists of beetle larvae, snails, etc., the chief factor being 

 that the animal should be a vehicle of lime. 



The further history of the young bird is uneventful. It gradu- 

 ally becomes clothed in feathers, the legs strengthen, and the 

 wnngs become developed. It certainly remains in the nest till it 

 is able to move about freely, but I cannot say I have disturbed 

 them much in these later periods, on account of the well-known 

 proclivity which all young birds exhibit of jumping out of the 

 nest and refusing to be replaced. It is at least seven weeks be- 

 fore the average bird leaves the nest and vanishes from view. 



Now I have no wish to labour my points unduly. But an ap- 

 preciation of observed facts should not leave the story derelict 

 with the deserted nest, and there should be some linking up of 

 function and structure, a passing glance in fact at applied anat- 

 omy; this more especially in s(j obscure a bird as the subject 

 of these notes. It is a commonplace of Zoology that the entire 

 class of liirds is not the equivalent of a single order of, say, rep- 



