464 Mr. Svvainson on New Australasian Birds. 



bability, will become hereafter the ruling power of the southern 

 hemisphere. Its commerce even now, administers to the necessi- 

 ties and comforts of the mother country. With these growing 

 advantages, let us hope that Science will not be forgotten, and 

 that our Public Repositories of knowledge will be stored with the 

 native productions of those remote regions; not merely to excite 

 admiration, or to gratify idle curiosity, but to furnish such materials 

 as may enable British Naturalists to take the lead in those general 

 enquiries into the laws of Nature, which are now occupying the 

 attention of some of the greatest philosophers on the Continent of 

 Europe. 



Independent of the interest, which in a national point of view 

 attaches to the Zoology of Australasia, that country presents a very 

 remarkable feature in the peculiarity of structure that pervades 

 by far the greatest part of its animal productions. This is 

 strikingly evinced in the department of Ornithology ; for although 

 we meet with a few groups of birds in New Holland, which are 

 likewise distributed in Southern Africa, and others which assimi- 

 late to forms more properly belonging to the Indian Archipelago, 

 yet, generally speaking, the Ornithology of Australasia is peculiar 

 to itself. So much so, indeed, that an experienced Naturalist, 

 having a hundred birds placed before him, of species he had 

 never before seen, might with tolerable certainty select all those 

 that came from this strange country. Many families which are 

 found in other divisions of the globe are here unknown, or are re- 

 presented under different forms : or, if I may be allowed the 

 expression, are disguised; but at the same time betray such a pe- 

 culiarity of habit, as at once to stamp them as natives of Austra- 

 lasia. In fact, a symbolical relationship seems to be almost uni- 

 versal. Nevertheless, so imperfect is our knowledge of the interior 

 Zoology of this country, and even of the manner and habits of 

 such species as are already familiar to us, that any thing beyond 

 a few general conclusions must not, at present, be attempted. 



Every new expedition that has been set on foot by the local 

 government, for the purpose of extending our geographic know- 

 ledge of the interior, has returned with fresh proofs of the Zoolo- 

 gical treasures it contains. Some of these, supposed to have been 



