556 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 
L. gibberulus, which ranges in Central Australia over an area of 
not less than 30,000 square miles, and has hitherto been observed, 
and frequently so, only on Proteaceous trees and shrubs ; whilst 
LI. quandang occupying the same area is restricted to Acacia 
aneura. On the other hand, Loranthus pendulus was observed by 
me, some twenty years ago, to occur in some of the orchards about 
Adelaide indiscriminately on fig, apple, pear, and other fruit- 
bearing trees ; of late years it seems to have died out, in all pro- 
bability the agents of transplanting the seeds have, through closer 
settlement and other causes, been expelled the district.* 
Some explanation of the attachment to certain mistletoes to 
particular host-species may be found when we shall have acquired 
full knowledge of the habits of the birds which are the agents of 
their dissemination. In the first instance, the association may have 
been accidental, some fruit-eating birds may have preferred certain 
species of trees or shrubs for shelter, and thus eventually there has 
arisen this phenomenon of interdependency—the tree affording 
food and as well as protection to the bird, and the bird securing 
the continuance of the species of mistletoe. 
The only agent, at present known, playing this role in the 
economy of the Loranthacee is Diceum hirundinaceum, concerning 
which in this connection, Dr. Ramsay, P.L.S., New South Wales, 
2nd ser., vol. i, p. 1093, 1886, writes :—“ This species is universally 
dispersed over the whole of Australia ; feeds on berries and fruits 
of various kinds, but seems to prefer those of Loranthus ; this 
plainly accounts for the distribution of the Loranthus and Viscwm 
all over the districts frequented by the Dicewm, and in which it is 
locally known as the Mistletoe-bird.” But both bird and mistletoe 
are absent from the large adjacent insular lands of Tasmania and 
Kangaroo Island. Dr. Ramsay has, however, included the bird 
in the geographical column for Tasmania, in his “Tabular List of 
Australian Birds,” 1888; but this record is an error, as I am 
assured by the leading ornithologists in Tasmania. 
An extensive tract of lightly-timbered country on the eastern 
slope of the Adelaide chain has also neither mistletoes nor Dicewm. 
The Diceum is very partial to the white ripe berries of Loranthus 
linearifolius. 
*Mr. F. Turner, F.L.S., New South Wales, 2nd ser., vol. 9, p. 557, 1895, records 27 
species of exotic trees and shrubs growing in New South Wales which are hosts for certain 
Australian Loranthacee, viz., Loranthus celastroides, L. pendulus, and Viscum articu- 
latuinm the first two being much more common than the last. 
