436 BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 



been observed, being Bank's Hutts on the York Road about 

 fifty-three miles from Fremantle." 



Its disposition is naturally shy and wary, a circumstance 

 which cannot be attributed to any dread of man as an enemy, 

 since it inhabits parts scarcely ever visited either by the 

 natives or Europeans. Pew persons, I may safely say, had 

 ever discharged a gun in that rich arboretum, the Belts of 

 the Murray, before the period of my being there : still the 

 bird was so difficult of approach, that it required the utmost 

 exertion to procure specimens. They were generally observed 

 in small troops of four or six in number, running through the 

 scrub one after another in a line, and resorting to a short 

 low flight, when crossing the small intervening plains. It 

 runs over the surface of the ground with even greater facility 

 than C. punctaium. 



In its mode of flight and nidification it assimilates so closely 

 to the Spotted Ground-Thrush, as to render a separate descrip- 

 tion superfluous. 



The stomach is extremely muscular, and the food consists 

 of seeds and the smaller kind of Coleoptera. 



The male has the crown of the head, ear-coverts, back of 

 the neck, upper part of the back, upper tail-coverts, and two 

 central tail-feathers brown ; stripe over the eye and another 

 from the base of the lower mandible down the side of the 

 neck white ; scapularies and lower part of the back rich 

 chestnut ; shoulders and wing-coverts black, each feather 

 having a spot of white at the tip ; primaries and secondaries 

 dark brown, margined with lighter brown ; lateral tail-fea- 

 thers black, largely tipped with white; chin, throat, and 

 centre of the breast steel black ; sides of the chest ' and flanks 

 brownish grey, the latter blotched with black ; centre of the 

 abdomen and under tail-coverts white ; bill black ; base of 

 the under mandible lead coloui" ; irides reddish hazel ; legs 

 blackish brown. The female differs in having the whole of 

 the plumage much lighter, and with only a slight tinge of 



