Notices of Books. 9787 



their cormorants ; the sandy spits of her rivers their pelicans, sand- 

 pipers, and plovers ; and her swamps and morasses are tenanted by 

 ducks, grebes, gallinules, and rails of the same types as those in- 

 habiting her antipodes. But these, in nearly every case, are distinct 

 species: she possesses no true Anser; but every one knows that she 

 has that ^ rara avis in terris,' the black swan. It is, however, in the 

 interior of the country (adorned with the universally spread Eucalypti, 

 extensive belts of Banksiae, forests of Xanthorrhoeae, Melahicae, &c.), 

 and in the heated brushes which clothe its south-eastern portions 

 (where stately palms spread their leaves over the eccaleobion or 

 hatching mound of the Talegalla and the theatreiou or playing bower 

 of the Ptilonorhynchus), that we find an avifauna different from that of 

 all other countries. 



" Some few genera, such as Graucalus, Artamus, and Halcyon, are 

 represented in the Indian Islands, on the peninsula of India, and even 

 in some portions of the continent of Asia; and many more genera, and 

 in some instances the same species, extend to New Guinea. The pro- 

 ductions of this latter country are, in fact, so similar to those of Austra- 

 lia, that, zoologically speaking, they cannot be separated. In writing 

 thus I, of course, include the southern country of Tasmania, but not 

 New Zealand or its satellites. Lord Howe's, Norfolk, and Phillip 

 Islands, and other adjacent specks in the ocean, the culminating 

 points probably of some great sunken continent, where bird-life reigned 

 supreme; for we have no evidence that any mammals, either placental 

 or marsupial, except bats, ever roamed over its surface, — mighty birds 

 taking the place of Mammalia, as is evidenced by the remains of the 

 great Struthiones which are almost daily exhumed from the morasses, 

 alluvial beds and caves of New Zealand. 



"Australia, lying as it does between the lOlh and 45th degrees of 

 south latitude, is suliject to many varieties of climate. The northern 

 portions are visited by monsoons ; while the southern have seasons 

 similar to those which occur in countries lying under the same degree 

 of latitude north of the line; in a word, summer and winter are as in 

 England, but of course at reversed periods of the year; as a natural 

 consequence, when the sun retires for a period from any portion of the 

 land, vegetation sleeps and insect-life becomes inert. Bird-life follows 

 the law of Nature, as seen in the northern hemisphere, and is much more 

 rife at one season than at another. The swallow and its congeners come 

 and go as regularly in the southern portion of Australia as they do in 

 England ; and so do the cuckoos, of which there are several species, 

 and not only a single one as with us. Besides these, there are many 



