^°''ijil"'] Correspondence. 245 



2. — " No changes should rest on uncertainties," wisely writes 

 an authority. Mr. Mathews states that Gould's name for the 

 Tawny Grass-Bird {Megaluriis galactotes) was proposed for an 

 African bird. There is no direct proof of this, although Mr. 

 Mathews's opinion is that Tcmminck's figure is only " almost 

 certainly " an African Cisticola. Therefore, we were truly 

 " amazed " that Mr. Mathews rejected Gould's perfect, lifelike 

 coloured plate in favour of an old figure of a supposed African 

 species and added to a well-known Australian bird his own new 

 names. 



3. — Mr. Mathews disparages, because belated news, our state- 

 ment — " We had the opportunity of proving that Ramsay's 

 Eopsaltria inornata and Hartert's Pachyccphala peninsiilce are 

 the same species." Our sentence should have been elaborated 

 thus : — " But are not two different sub-species, as shoimi in 

 Mathews's last (1913) ' List.' " We have examined skins from 

 both of Mathews's so-called sub-specific localities, also from New 

 Guinea. " No proof is put forward," says Mr. Mathews. We 

 hold the material. 



4, and lastly. — Regarding the Merops, one could write pages of 

 speculative interest on the variation and habitat of Bee-eaters. 

 Let it suffice for the present to remark that with the " H. L. 

 White Collection," together with the national collections at 

 Sydne}^ and Melbourne, there is enough material to enable 

 Australians to work out their " own salvation." In the first- 

 mentioned collection there is, from the Coongan River, North- 

 West Australia (Mathews's precise locality for M. shortridgei) , 

 a male specimen in perfect plumage, perhaps more golden about 

 the head than is usually the case, but it exactly corresponds with 

 the male of a pair collected at Kow Plains, Victoria. Again, 

 there is a typical M. ornatiis taken by Capt. S. A. White, M.B.O.U., 

 on or near the Nullabor Plain, at the head of the Great Australian 

 Bight — ^midway between the east a«d west coasts of Australia. 

 To which stream of migrants (or supposed sub-species), eastern 

 or western, would Mr. Mathews refer this central bird ? — I am, &c., 



A. J. CAMPBELL. 



Surrey Hills (Vic), 22/1/18. 



Reviews. 



[" Descriptive List of the Birds of Tasmania and .\djacent Islands," by 

 Clive E. Lord, Hobart.] 



There have been several lists of Tasmanian birds published — - 

 Gunn's and Swan's, both founded on John (iould ; Legge's, after 

 the " Catalogues of Birds," British Muscimi : and last we have Mr. 

 Lord's, according to Mr. G. M. Mathews's " 1913 List," and in 

 useful pocket form. In Mr. Lord's list the vernacular name of the 

 bird is first given, then the technical (trinomial) nomenclature, 

 followed by a few succinct words of description. 



17 



