THE SPIRIT OF AUSTRALIA 161 



of very many black and white Crow-Shrikes Mag- 

 pies and Butcher-Birds. This particular Butcher- 

 Bird (the black-throated species) is much more 

 plentiful in these areas than it is in Southern 

 Australia, where the grey Butcher-Bird ("Whistling 

 Jack") is the chief representative of the genus. 



In regard to the Magpie, how interesting it would 

 be to know why the well-known white-backed species 

 of the south does not occur in the north having 

 in mind the fact that the Black-backed Magpie is 

 common both to north and south. One wonders 

 whether it is in spite or because of this fact that 

 Mr. Robert Hall (whose useful bird books are well 

 known) has laid down in an ornithological magazine 

 his belief that the Black-backed Magpie is merely a 

 sub-species, or off-shoot, of the white-backed bird. 



In "certain areas," he says, "the sub-species is so 

 fixed as apparently to be a species; in others the 

 inter-breeding and the specimens showing reversion 

 are so common as to make them inseparable; while, 

 again, in the back country of all the eastern States, is 

 shown the strong evidence of lesser dimensions, 

 apart from dichromatism. Yet these lesser 

 dimensions are not quite confined to the inland and 

 drier area. Their points of resemblance are so many 

 and those of difference so few that one strongly 

 inclines to mark them as one variable species. In 

 habitat both are the same; flight, gait, mode of 

 hunting for food, and the food itself are the same. 

 v . . . The difference appears to be in the plumage 

 markings ; possibly, too, in warble and temperament, 

 varying with the area. . . . The warble of the Black- 

 is 



