160 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXV. 



blossoms, Calocephalus Brownii^ Sccevola suaveolens, and Lor- 

 anthus celastroides, I did not meet with anything of special 

 interest. 



Having soon exhausted the possibilities of the sand-hills, I 

 returned around the end of the water separating me from the 

 hotel, and, crossing over to the high ground, where I gathered 

 another climber bearing umbels of unopened flower-buds, which 

 proved to be Marsdenia rostrata, Phyllanthus Gunni% and 

 P. thynwides, returned through a fine grove of Banksia serrata to 

 the town. 



In the afternoon I crossed the bridge over the water on the 

 north of the Cunninghame peninsula and ransacked the high 

 ground behind which Kalimna is situated. Here there were only 

 a few plants in flower, such as Aster stellulafus, Pultencea daph- 

 noides, and Indigofera australis ; but in the thick scrub fringing 

 the lake-side were Clematis aristata, Tecoma Australis, Geitonople- 

 sium cymosum, and Smilax Australis, with Pteris falcata, growing 

 very freely, and Pteris arguta, and last;, but by no means least, 

 one fine bush of Howittia trilocularis, which I had previously 

 unsuccessfully sought for at Mount Arapiles, in western Victoria. 



NOTES ON NEWTON'S BOWER-BIRD, PRIONODURA 

 NEWTONIANA, De Vis, AND THE TOOTH-BILLED 

 BOWER-BIRD, SCENOP(EETES DENTIROSTRIS, 

 Ramsay. 



By Alfred J. North, C.M.B.O.U., C.F.A.O.U., Ornithologist 



to the Australian Museum, Sydney, New South Wales. 

 (Read before the Field Naturalists' Cluh of Victoria, \^th Jan., 1909.) 

 Every ornithologist and oologist usually has some favourite 

 family in birds, or their eggs. From the time when as a boy I 

 first read the accounts of the bower-building habits of the family 

 Ptilonorhynchidce, of Australia, the various members of it have 

 never once ceased to attract and interest me. Here we find a 

 group of birds, not content with following out their ordinary 

 natural instincts in building nests, laying eggs, and rearing their 

 young, but who form bowers or play-grounds, which they more or 

 less decorate with various articles, as suits the tastes of the differ- 

 ent species. In the genera Ptilonorhynchus and Chlamydodera 

 bones form a great portion of the objects carried to the bowers, 

 and to a less degree shells, small stones, fruits, berries, and 

 metallic substances ; the decorations of the bowers of Sericulus 

 consisting mainly of land-shells and berries. Prionodura orna- 

 ments its bower entirely with floral decorations, and in this respect 

 comes closer to the Gardener-birds of New Guinea, belonging to 

 the genus Amblyornis, than it does to the typical members of 



