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. 



Catheturiut 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 bill is 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 befrsv* 

 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 lathami. BRUSH-TURKEY. 



Gould, Vol. V., pi. 77 (pt. i.), Dec. 1st, 1840. Mathews, Vol. I., pt. 1, pi. 8, Oct. 31st, 1910. 



Alectura lathami Gray, Zool. Miscell., pt. I., p. 4, 1831, Nov. 5th : [near Sydney], New South 



Wales. 



Meliagris lindesayii Jameson, L'Institut., Vol. III., No. 116, p. 238, July 22nd, 1835. Nom. 



nud. 



Catheturus australis Swainson, Classif. Birds, Vol. II., p. 206, July 1st, 1837. New name for 



A. lathami Gray. 



Catheturus novcehottandice Bonaparte, Comptes Rendus Acad. ScL (Paris), Vol. XLJI., p. 



-876, May 1856. Nom. nud. 



Talegattus purpureicottis Le Souef, 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 



