INSESSOllES. 487 



and familiar birds inhabiting the colonics of New South 

 Wales, Tasmania, and South Australia: all the gardens of 

 the settlers are visited by it, and among their shrubs and 

 flowering plants it annually breeds. The belts of Banksias, 

 growing on sterile, sandy soils, also afford it so congenial an 

 asylum, that I am certainly not wrong in saying they are 

 never deserted by it, or that the one is a certain accom- 

 paniment of the other. The range enjoyed by this species 

 appears to be confined to the south-eastern portions of Aus- 

 tralia : it is abundant on the sandy districts of South Australia 

 wherever the Banksias abound. In Tasmania it is much more 

 numerous on the northern than on the southern portion of 

 the island. It evinces a more decided preference for shrubs 

 and low trees than for those of a larger growth ; consequently 

 it is a species particularly subject to the notice of man ; nor 

 is it the least attractive of the Australian avi-fauna; the 

 strikingly-contrasted markings of its plumage, and the beau- 

 tiful appearance of its golden-edged wings, when passing with 

 its quick jumping flight from shrub to shrub, rendering it a 

 most conspicuous and pleasing object. 



It has a loud, shrill, liquid, although monotonous note. Its 

 food, which consists of the pollen and juices of flowers, is pro- 

 cured while clinging and creeping among them in every 

 variety of position : it also feeds on fruits and insects. 



It usually rears two or three broods during the course of 

 the season, which lasts from August to January : the nest is 

 very easily found, being placed in any low open bush. One 

 of those in my collection was taken from a row of i)eas in 

 the kitchen-garden of the Government House at Sydney. It 

 is a somewhat compact structure, composed of small wiry 

 sticks, coarse grasses, and broad and narrow strips of bark ; 

 the inside lined with the soft woolly portion of the blossoms 

 of small ground plants: the eggs, which are two or three in 

 number, are of a pale buff, thinly spotted and freckled with 

 deep chestnut-brown, particularly at the larger end, where they 



