162 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. XXV. 



bill a stalk and head of brilliant double-flowering scarlet geranium 

 as it would a blue or any other flower. I also tried it with 

 difl"erent-coloured ribbons, and it would pick up a red or brown 

 piece as often as it would a blue one. About their bowers, both 

 in Victoria and in New South Wales, I have generally found one 

 or two blue or partially blue feathers stuck up in the walls of 

 most of the bowers I have examined, but this was due solely to 

 their being the rigid quills or tail feathers of Platycercus elegans 

 and P. eximius, which are usually found frequenting the same 

 haunts. 



In captivity I have had many opportunities of watching these 

 birds construct their bowers, and at all times that duty was per- 

 formed alone by the male. In fact, the male drives the female or 

 any other bird in the aviary away from the vicinity of the bower 

 during the operation. It is remarkable how quickly the male 

 works, the walls at first being built, which consist of long, thin 

 twigs stuck upright in the soft earth, and the platform or floor 

 being filled in afterwards. I have seen a bundle of twigs thrown 

 in and loosely scattered about an aviary, and in less than two 

 hours the bower would be built and completed. 



Prionodura newtoniana, Newton's Bower-bird. 



Prionodura newtoniana, De Vis, Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 

 vol. vii., p. 562 {1883); North, Abstr. Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., 

 p. ii. (27th November, 1908). 



Our knowledge of the habits of Prionodura neivtooiiana and 

 Scenopceetes dentirostris was largely increased by the labours, in 

 1888, of Mr. Kendal Broadbent, collecting in the Bellenden-Ker 

 Range, North-eastern Queensland, on behalf of the Trustees of 

 the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, and during the same and 

 the following year by Messrs. E. J. Cairn and Robert Grant, 

 performing similar duties in the same part of Queensland on 

 behalf of the Trustees of the Australian Museum, Sydney. The 

 late Mr. W. S. Day also collected a large number of specimens of 

 both species during a nine years' residence at Kuranda, about 21 

 miles by rail from Cairns. Many private collectors, too, have 

 searched for their nests and eggs. Ail attempts, however, to gain 

 any knowledge of the nidification and eggs of either species were 

 fruitless. Since the return of the expeditions from Bellenden- 

 Ker Range, sent out by the Trustees of the Australian Museum, 

 I have made every effort to obtain the nests and eggs of these 

 two species, and more especially in 1900, when I was preparing 

 the MS. of Part I. of the second edition of " Nests and Eggs of 

 Australian Birds," in which the Bower-birds are included. My • 

 endeavours were ably seconded by Mr. Robert Grant, Taxider- 

 mist of the Australian Museum, Sydney, and entirely by his 

 instrumentality they have at last been crowned with success, 



