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A MANUAL OF THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA, 
Incubation-period.—42 to 45 days. 
Distribution and forms —Confined to southern extra-tropical Australia. Two 
forms have been indicated, an eastern and western form, the latter being darker 
and smaller than the former. 
Genus ALECTURA. 
Alectura Latham, Gen. Hist. Birds, Vol. X., p. 455, 1824. Type (by monotypy): New 
Holland Vulture = A. lathami Gray. 
Catheturus Swainson Classif. Birds, Vol. II., p. 206, July 1st, 1837. New name for Alectura 
Latham. 
Large heavily built Galline birds with longish necks, small head and bill, long 
rounded wings, very long rounded tail, strong stout legs and feet. The head and 
neck are bare with a scanty covering of bristly feathers, and a large fleshy wattle 
at the base of the sides of the neck. The billis comparatively small, stout, laterally 
compressed, culmen strongly arched, no dertrum differentiated, the depth half as 
long as the length and more than the width, the lower edges of the upper mandibles 
straight, tip not decurved ; the nasal groove indefinite, less than half the length of 
the culmen, and in the anterior portion the nostrils are situated half-way between 
culmen ridge and edge of mandible; the apertures are rounded ovals, large and 
open, but there appears a small internal process ; the under mandible spoon shaped, 
the gonys about half the length and almost straight, the mandibular rami ill defined 
posteriorly, the interramal space sparsely bristly as the head and neck. The wing 
is composed of stiff feathers, rounded, the first primary a little more than half the 
fifth, which is longest, the second is about two-thirds, the third and fourth longer, 
and the sixth to the tenth almost the same length as the fifth, and the secondaries 
are almost as long. The tail is peculiar in that it consists of eighteen very broad 
feathers with rounded tips, the outside feather shortest and the fifth from the outside 
longest, the middle one shorter so that it is doubly rounded ; it is very long, about 
two-thirds the length of the wing, and the tail-coverts are short, the upper shorter 
than the under ones. The feet are very stout, the tarsus very broad with the front 
covered with a row of broad scutes, often divided into two, the sides with small 
hexagonal scutes, but the back with large scutes, smaller on the inside ; the toes 
are long, the claws long and little curved ; the middle toe shorter than the tarsus, 
the inner and outer shorter and subequal, the hind-toe about half the length of 
the middle toe. 
Coloration above and below blackish. Nestling brownish. 
152. Alectura lathamiimBRUSH-TURKEY. 
Gould, Vol. V., pl. 77 (pt. 1.), Dec. 1st, 1840. Mathews, Vol. I., pt. 1, pl. 8, Oct. 31st, 1910. 
Alectura lathami Gray, Zool. Miscell., pt. 1., p. 4, 1831, Nov. 5th: [near Sydney], New South 
Wales. 
Meliagris lindesayii Jameson, L’Institut., Vol. III., No. 115, p. 238, July 22nd, 1835. Nom. 
nud. 
Catheturus australis Swainson, Classif. Birds, Vol. II., p. 206, July Ist, 1837. New name for 
A. lathami Gray. 
Catheturus novehollandie Bonaparte, Comptes Rendus Acad. Sci. (Paris), Vol. XLII., p. 
876, May 1856. Nom. nud. 
Talegallus purpureicollis Le Souéf, Ibis, Jan. 1898, p. 51: Cape York, Queensland. 
Alectura lathami robinsoni Mathews, Nov. Zool., Vol. XVIII., p. 177, Jan. 31st, 1912: Cairns, 
North Queensland. 
DIsTRIBUTION.—Queensland, New South Wales. 
Adult male-—Sides of neck, upper back, wings above and below and tail black ; 
middle of back covered with down-like feathers which are sooty-grey at base and 
blackish at the tips; under-surface blackish, the feathers of the upper-breast 
