THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 177 



it utter a note. The young male resembles the female. The 

 rusty colour of the face and throat distinguish it from every 

 other species of Pachycephala. I call the attention of future 

 ornithologists to the subject." 



Taking this male bird as a phase it naturally would be exceed- 

 ingly difficult to duplicate it, as the rufous changes irregularly. 

 Hence probably the reason why the ornithologists have not 

 succeeded in finding its counterpart. Still it does not follow, as 

 we have been exceedingly slow in securing life-histories, and 

 such students of the birds of Australia have a wonderful field 

 open to them. Gould practically says the bird has no vocal 

 power. If a young bird this would be natural, and if an old bird 

 it would, by comparison, be very unnatural. 



To restrict the range to within a few miles of Adelaide would 

 be very unusual, and Mr. Gould's idea that its stronghold 

 would probably appear in Central Australia has not been favoured 

 by the researches of the " Horn Expedition." 



The British Museum has a specimen labelled " Tasmania," 

 and, for reasons mentioned later, this I consider weakens the 

 original cause. The difficulty of securing a second skin exactly 

 like a phase that is unstable in its order of plumage development 

 appeals to everyone, but I have one skin which is not unlike it, 

 and others that support the affinity to it. Three phases in my 

 collection show their colours thus : — 



(a) Nestling, male, 7/1 1/96, Heytesbury, Victoria. — Uniform 

 rufous, excepting quills, which are partly grey and rufous 

 in part. 



(6) Nestling, male, 1 2/1/9 7, Myrniong, Victoria. — In size it 

 is about as large as the adult. Varying rufous, except- 

 ing the principal quills, which are brownish-grey. Not 

 so deep a rufous as in (a). 



(c) Young male, 25/8/96, Heytesbury, Victoria, per Mr. 

 Geo. Graham. — This is the phase referred to by Mr. 

 Gould as the young. Certainly it is grey like the 

 female. There is very little doubt Mr. Gould missed 

 seeing the preceding phases, and had he secured the 

 same specimens a month or two later (at the longest, in 

 the same year) he would have observed the pectoral 

 black collar appearing beneath the grey surface that has 

 taken the place of the rufous plumage, and that, in its 

 turn, gives way to the approaching " blacks." 



In Gould's drawing I am surprised to find the rusty inner 

 secondaries have fallen before the rusty under surface feathers, 

 but this is surely accounted for by the letterpress reading " wings 

 dark brown margined with greyish-brown." The colour given 

 and shown on certain of the quills in the plate is the dull yellow 



