NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 87 



In Van Diemen's Land it may, Mr. Gould adds, be 

 regarded as strictly migratory. It arrives there, accord- 

 ing to his observation, in October, the beginning of the 

 Australian summer, and, after rearing at least two 

 broods, departs again northwards in November. A 

 scattered few remain throughout the jear on the conti- 

 nent in all the localities favourable to their habits, the 

 number being regulated by the supi^ly of insect food. 

 He remarks, that specimens from the Swan River, South 

 Australia, and New South Wales, present no difference, 

 either in size or colouring, while those from Yan Diemen's 

 Land are invariably larger in all their admeasurements, 

 and are also of a deeper colour. 



The general season of incubation is from September to 

 December, and the situation of the nest much varied. 

 Mr. Gould saw one in a thickly-foliaged bush near the 

 ground ; others, in a naked fork, on the side of the bole 

 of a tree, in a niche formed by a portion of the bark 

 having been separated from the trunk, &c. The nest 

 itself he describes as rather shallow, of a rounded form, 

 about five inches in diameter, and composed of fine twio-s 

 neatly lined with fibrous roots. He observed that the 

 nests found in Van Diemen's Land were larger, more 

 compact, and more neatly formed, than those on the 

 continent of Australia ; and one which was sho^vn to him 

 by Mr. Justice Montague, near Hobart Town, was placed 

 at the extremity of a small leafy branch. The nest 

 figured by Mr. Gould is so represented. 



By the way, Mr. Yarrell gives, in his highty-interest- 

 ing British Birds, a vignette executed from a drawing 

 by Mr. Edward Cooke for the late Mr. Wells of Redleaf. 

 It represents a nest of our common swallow built on the 

 bough of a sycamore, which hung low over a pond at the 

 Moat, Penshurst, in Kent, in the summer of 1832. 



Mr. Gould describes the eggs of Artamus sordidus, 

 which are four in number, as differing much in the dis- 



