360 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



grass or herbage, beneath a stone, &c. ; it is spherical in 

 form, with a small neatly-made hole for an entrance. The 

 breeding-season includes August and the three or four follow- 

 ing months, dm'ing which period two or three broods are 

 usually reared. The eggs, which are generally three in num- 

 ber, are of a dull flesh-white, freckled and streaked with pur- 

 plish brown, particularly at the larger end; their medium 

 length is ten lines, and breadth seven and a half lines. 



Centre of the forehead, lores, and a line beneath the eye 

 black ; over the eye a line of greyish white ; crown of the 

 head, all the upper surface, wings, and tail olive-brown ; 

 wing-coverts tipped with white ; spurious wing blackish 

 brown ; throat white, striated with black ; centre of the 

 chest and abdomen citron-yellow; flanks olive-brown; bill 

 blackish brown ; feet yellowish white. 



Sp. 217. SERICORNIS LJEVIGASTER, Gould. 



Buff-breasted Sericornis, 

 Sei'iconiis lavigaster, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc, part xv. p. 3, 



Sericornis Isevigaster, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol., vol. iii. pi. 50. 



This species, although nearly allied to the S. maculatus, is 

 distinguished by the entire absence of spots on the throat and 

 chest, and by having the tail-feathers largely tipped with 

 white. 



The acquisition of a male and a female is part of the 

 results of Dr. Leichardt's overland expedition from Moreton 

 Bay to Port Essington, an exaniple of each sex having been 

 killed by Gilbert on the 30th of November 1844 ; but there 

 is no information whatever respecting them in his Journal. 



All the upper surface brown ; tail deepening into black 

 near the extremity and tipped with white ; spurious wing- 

 feathers dark brown, margined with white on tli^ir inner 

 webs ; lores and mark under tlie eye brownish black ; above 



