INSESSORES. 389 



pretty song, which it frequently pours forth while sitting on a 

 bare twig, or the summit of a low bush or shrub among the 

 thickets, to a part of which it dives on the least alarm. 



The sexes are precisely similar in colour, and nearly so in 

 size. 



All the upper surface olive, with a broad mark of sooty 

 black down the centre of each feather ; wings sooty black, 

 narrowly margined with olive ; tail olive, all but the two 

 centre feathers crossed near the tip by a broad band of sooty 

 bkxck ; line over the eye white ; throat greyish white ; breast, 

 abdomen, and flanks deep buff, each feather of the throat 

 breast, and flanks with a narrow line of sooty black down the 

 centre; irides light sandy buff"; bill and feet brownish flesh- 

 colour. 



Sp. 238. CALAMANTHUS CAMPESTRIS. 



Field Calamanthus. 

 Praticola campestris, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc, part viii. p. 171. 



Calamanthus campestris, Gould, Birds of Australia, fol., vol. iii. 

 pi. 71. 



The Calamanthus campestris is a native of Southern and 

 Western Australia, where it inhabits open plains and scrubby 

 lands, particularly such as are interspered with tufts of coarse 

 grasses. It has never yet been discovered within the colony 

 of New South Wales. Like its near ally of Tasmania it is a 

 rather shy and recluse species, running mouse-like over the 

 ground among the herbage with its tail perfectly erect, and is 

 not easily forced to fly, or even to quit the bush in which it 

 has secreted itself. 



Its song is an agreeable and pretty warble, which is poured 

 forth while the bird is perched upon the topmost twig of a 

 small bush. 



This species also emits so very powerful an odour, that my 

 dog frequently pointed at it from a very considerable distance. 



