90 THE VICTORIAN NATURALI5T 
point, at which we strack the sands first. The coal here is of course 
valueless, but the limestone of Waratah Bay is largely worked for 
lime. Mr. Miller, the manager of the Yanakie Station, is on the 
keen look out to develop the resources of this unpromising district, 
whether limestone, or gold which he has detected in the Hoddle. 
NOTES ON THE HABITS OF NATIVE BIRDS. 
By I. Batzy, Sunsury. 
Read before the Field Naturalists’ Club af Victoria, 10th Aug., 1885 
Part I., Crows. 
Tue Carrion Crow is a bird too well known to everybody to require 
any description of his outward garb now. He is held in utter 
detestation by most persons, but his congeners—the rayens—were 
illustrious enough to figure in Holy Writ, besides they were sacred 
to the god Odin or Woden of Scandinavian mythology. Being con- 
nected with a noble family is of just as much use to him, as our rich 
friends at home are to us out here. Dame Nature has turned Mr- 
Crow out of her universal workshop to act as “ scavenger-general ” 
to the world, and to make him a thoroughly effective agent she made 
him a gregarious bird. This is an extremely wise provision, for it 
means unity and co-operation, a combination productive of the 
largest amount of work in the shortest space of time. With the 
exception of the white cockatoo, the crow is the most cunning bird 
with which I am acquainted. He rapidly becomes alive to a sense 
of danger if persecuted with the gun or poison. With regard to the 
variation of colour in the iris of the eye, which in some birds is 
white and others black, I am of opinion that this is due to age, as 
in all the young birds just out of the nest which I have examined, 
not one had white eyes. Magpies, when young, have brownish or 
black eyes, which after a certain period change to a rich coppery-- 
red. 
The creed of the crow is ‘‘increase and multiply.” In the per— 
petuation of his kind, he has a strongly-defined sense of the emotion 
of love. He marries wholesale, and could statistics be taken it 
would be found that but a very small percentage of these birds faik 
to enter the connubial state in the breeding season. 
Instead of contracting his means of subsistence, settlement has 
greatly enlarged it. It must not be supposed that because he 
devours carrion he subsists on that alone. His dietary scale 
commands a far wider range. About the creeks here, a thorny bush 
