TNSESSORES. 309 



ing something of its nidification, but did not succeed in find- 

 ing any nest with eggs ; I found, however, one large domed 

 nest made of sticks and placed in the spur of a large fig-tree, 

 which the natives assured me was that of the Colwin, their 

 name for this bird ; it resembled that of Orthonijx, except 

 that the inside was not lined with moss, but with the litter 

 from a large mass of parasitical plants that had fallen to the 

 ground. The natives agree in asserting that the eggs are 

 only laid in the cold weather, by which I apprehend they 

 mean the spring, as I shot a young bird about four months 

 old, on the 24th of November, which had the whole of the 

 body still covered with a brown and greyish down. I have 

 seen this species take some extraordinary jumps of not less 

 than ten feet from the ground on to a convenient branch, 

 whence it continues to ascend in successive leaps, until it has 

 attained a sufficient elevation to enable it to take flight into 

 the gully below." 



The male has the crown of the head and back of a 

 sooty black, with a tinge of chestnut on the forehead and 

 some of the crest-feathers ; all the upper surface, and parti- 

 cularly the upper tail-coverts, rich rusty chestnut ; primaries 

 blackish brown, tinged with rufous on their external edges ; 

 throat rusty red, passing into a paler tint of the same colour 

 on the breast ; abdomen grey, washed with sandy buff; 

 thighs grey, slightly washed with buff; under tail-coverts 

 bright rufous ; upper surface of the tail-feathers slaty black, 

 their under surface silvery grey ; the large outer feather on 

 each side much shorter than the corresponding feathers in 

 Menura stiperba, and entirely destitute of the bars so conspi- 

 cuous in that species ; the two centre feathers narrow, pro- 

 longed, crossing each other at the base, curving outward at 

 the tip, and webbed only on their external side. 



The female is similar in colour to the male; but distin- 

 guishable by the feathers of the tail being much less filament- 

 ous in their structure, and by the two middle feathers being 



