THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST, 87 



US, over i,ooo feet below, nestled amongst trees, was the hotel we 

 left in the morning, and to which we returned safely at 6 o'clock 

 punctually, with a splendid appetite for our dinner. I Uttle 

 expected that two days later, in the last days of January, the 

 plateau would be covered with snow fully an inch deep. Since 

 my former visit a hospice has been erected here, which is superin- 

 tended by Mrs. Carlile, and to which visitors from Bright resort 

 during the winter season to enjoy a good snowballing. 



I obtained a gi'eat variety of species at the Buffalos, many of 

 which I missed on the other parts of the Alps, but it would be 

 tiring to enumerate them here. 



Saturday and Sunday turned out cold and wet, with snow on 

 the mount; but I was comfortable at the hotel, and found plenty 

 to do with drying and arranging my specimens. Though I had 

 no books with me I was able, with only three or four exceptions, 

 to name from memory all the specimens I had collected during 

 iny Alpine excursion. I left a set of the Buffalo plants ready 

 named with Mr. Mansfield's son for the information of future 

 visitors, as I also had done at the St. Bernard hospice in respect 

 to the Mount Hotham flora. 



My time being fully up, I returned to Melbourne on Monday 

 by the afternoon train from Porepunkah. Apologizing for the 

 length of this account, I trust that many of my hearers will have 

 the opportunity of enjoying next summer the bracing and in- 

 vigorating atmosphere of our Alps, where the nights are always 

 cool, and where, with regard to its flora, our Australian summer 

 is changed to a lovely spring. 



NEST AND EGGS OF THE CARTER HONEY-EATER, 

 PTILOTIS LEILAVALENSIS, North. 



By a. J. Campbell. 



Although this bird was first publicly exhibited and described 

 by me as P. carteri, Mr. A. J. North, the Ornithologist of the 

 Australian Museum, was enabled to get his name, leilavalensis, 

 into print a few days earlier than carteri ; therefore, in obedience 

 to the law of priority, the former name must remain. 



I have now pleasure in describing a nest and eggs of this new 

 Honey-eater, discovered on the 14th July last by Mr. Carter at 

 a creek near the North-West Cape, Western Australia. 



Nest. — Cup-shaped, oval, well built of chiefly wool and 

 spiders' cocoons, bound together with light-coloured rootlets, 

 lined inside, principally on the bottom, with yellowish-white 

 down off plants, and suspended by the rim to a salt-bush, 3 or 4 

 feet from the ground, near a waterhole. Dimensions over all, 

 3 inches by 2^ inches in depth; egg cavity, i^ inches across 

 by i^ inches deep. 



