THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 55 



of rearing an uncongenial bird. As with previous cases, the 

 foreign egg remained unhatched, and this gave the smaller bird 

 an opportunity to rear its young without the stronger opposition 

 of the well-known fighting character. Rarely do small birds add 

 a second nest of the same nature. Mr. Romanes has noted this 

 inclination in the Common Wren of Europe, and individual cases 

 are elsewhere quoted. 



The " yellow-tail tit " of the boys builds its nest not only in 

 hedges, but against the trunks and larger branches of various 

 trees, and, as has been previously noted, to the sticks of the 

 lower portion of Crows' or Ravens' nests, without any interest in 

 the blue or white eyes of their black neighbours. The parasitical 

 Mistletoe (Loranthus) is also resorted to, as well as the Wattle. 



A case of two clutches of eggs placed in the same nest, and 

 being sat upon by two birds, is quite unusual. The eggs 

 numbered six, and one male bird appeared to feed the sitting 

 ones with insects. That two birds sat upon the eggs was proved 

 by the flight of both from the nest upon approaching it. How 

 this state of matters would have developed I cannot say, as 

 observations were interrupted by the wilful destruction of the 

 nest. The disposition of this species is certainly a friendly one. 

 A young neighbour of mine one evening caught a family of this 

 tit, comprising the parents and three young ones, and trans- 

 ferred them along with the nest to a wire-faced box, where they 

 were carefully kept and fed for fourteen days, at the conclusion 

 of which they were allowed their freedom. Each evening, for 

 three weeks, they returned to the box to roost, and doubtless 

 would have continued the custom had not the innocent-looking 

 cat of the house preyed upon the five in the late hours of the 

 night. 



In further evidence of the goodnature of this bird, I may say 

 that, having extracted the eggs from one nest, I kept them away 

 for nearly twenty minutes, and then returned two of the three 

 with indented sides, less a cuckoo's egg that was with them. 

 The bird gracefully, with agitation, returned to its eggs and I 

 believe brought the young out, according to evidences seen on 

 my return to the nest a few weeks later. I know it sat upon the 

 eggs for days after the occurrence. 



Our nearest allied bird to G. chrysorrliwa is the Buff-rumped 

 Geobasileus, G. reguloides, V. and H., easily known from the 

 former by its absence of white markings on the forehead and the 

 fainter colour of the upper tail coverts. It is numerous in this 

 locality and well dispersed over the country lying south-east of an 

 imaginary line between Spencer's Gulf and the Fitzroy River, in 

 Queensland. Both species are popular friends of tillers of the 

 soil, but rarely are they recognized as two species. G. reguloides, 

 by its habit of hanging to gum-trees, is generally confused with 



