84 RIDDLE— Matching Coloui 



Mr. John Walker, when in the Jnmbuck Range of moun- 

 tains, saw a Lyre Bird fly and settle in a spot not 20 feet away 

 from where he stood ; he' kept perfectly still, when the bird com- 

 menced imitating a bitch dingo with pups, the whimpering of 

 the litter of pups as they tried to follow their parent as she 

 travelled through the bush, was, he tells me, quite perfect. 



This record is of particular interest, as nowadays it is diffi- 

 cult enough to get an opportunity of hearing dingo pups in the 

 bush, much less to hear a perfect imitation thereof. 



Mr. Joseph Walker told me of an instance, when he was 

 close to a Lyre Bird which was imitating the clink and ringing 

 sound made by the knocking together of two metal wedges used 

 by the woodsmen in felling timber ; this sound is common when 

 the wedges are thrown down after splitting a log. He also 

 heard the bird imitate perfectly the sound of a crosscut saw. My 

 son also in the same locality watched a cock Lyre Bird going 

 through a wonderful performance on a log. and amongst its 

 other items was the sound of stapling a wire fence ; the peculiar 

 ringing sound caused by the vibration of the wire was got to a 

 nicety; all these records have been obtained on the Walkers' 

 property. 



On paying a second visit to the same gully where I had 

 listened to the cock's performance, I heard in the bottom of the 

 gully a loud, gutteral note, repeated in couplets, best described 

 as "chunk chunk," but less metallic and more gutteral than the 

 cock-bird's natural note; this had also a sort of quaver in it, 

 quite distinct from the other. I managed to get quite close, 

 and then saw the boughs of a tall wattle moving as a heavy bird 

 jumped from bough to bough, thus ascending the tree till 15 or 

 20 ft. high, when the bird (a hen) volplaned down to the bot- 

 tom of tiie gully in full view about 20 paces away from me, tail 

 held straight out behind. 



Matching Colours by Artificial Illumination. 



—By Arthur R. Riddle.— 



Every student of Natural History must, at some time or 

 other, have regretted the shortcomings of most artificial illumi- 

 nants, in that they failed to adequately show up the colours 

 existent in specimens. Whilst the trouble has been mitigated 

 to some extent with each advance in artificial lighting, one could 

 not until recently make a colour comparison of extreme accu- 



