Voi.xxvii.-| I.EACH, The Birds of Victoria. 143 



1910 



THE BIRDS OF VICTORIA. 



A Lecture by J. A. Leach, M.Sc. 



{Delivered before ilie Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, 12th 



September, 19 10.) 



No apology is needed for the choice of the birds of Victoria as 

 a subject for a lecture, for no country in the world can approach 

 Australia in the interest of its animals and plants. No less an 

 authority than the great Huxley divided the world into two — 

 Australia and the rest of the world — so far as the interest of 

 the furred animals (mammals) was concerned. 



We are even more fortunate in regard to birds, for we not only 

 have our own peculiar interesting birds, such as the Emu, Mallee- 

 Hen, Black Swan, Laughing Jackass, cockatoos, many parrots. 

 Lyre-bird, Bower-birds, and many others, which will be re- 

 ferred to later, but we also have one or more representatives 

 of every widely-spread family of birds but two, the only two 

 widely-spread families totally absent from Australia being the 

 vultures and woodpeckers. Our rare and peculiar forms far 

 more than counterbalance the loss of these two. Thus, Aus- 

 tralians should be proud of their birds, and do their best to 

 preserve them for future generations. 



Passing now to a consideration of the different groups, birds 

 in general are divided into two sub -classes — (i) Palaeognathae 

 and (2) Neognathse. The first is the small group of flightless, 

 running birds, made up of five living birds, all inhabiting 

 southern lands. These are the Emu and Cassowary of Aus- 

 tralia, the Ostrich of South Africa, the Rhea or South America 

 Ostrich, and the Kiwi or Apteryx of New Zealand.* Taken 

 together with other evidence, all pointing in the same direc- 

 tion, scientists have been led to imagine a great southern land 

 mass connecting these southern lands, for the Emu did not fly 

 here, nor did the Rhea fly to South America, but they must 

 have reached their present home by land. These birds, not 

 flying, have no big wing-muscles, and so do not need the keel 

 or ridge of bone down the breast. Thus they belong to the 

 sub-class with a raft-like breast bone. All other living birds 

 belong to the sub -class the members of which have a keel on 

 the breast bone for the attachment of the wing-muscles. The 

 large number of Australian birds belonging to this second sub- 

 class are now divided into 20 orders, which, with the Emu 

 order, make a total of 21 orders of birds represented in Australia. 

 The Emu is our only representative of the first order, Casuarii- 

 formes. 



The birds of the second order — Galliformes — are well known 



* The Truanois of South America are also placed by Pycraft in the Palaeog- 

 nathae. 



