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(123 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 
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darkness coming on, we turned in, but we spent a very bad night. 
Our bed was composed of coral, mingled with a sort of mould 
produced by decayed wood, so it was none of the softest, and, of 
course, the rain had made it exceedingly damp. Then, added to 
this, the place was infested with large scrub rats, who ran over our 
faces, ate our birds, and ran away with our condensed milk, tin and 
all. It was no use trying to drive them away, they were back again 
the next minute. We had seen some blacks paddling about in 
their canoes during the day, so had to be on the look-out for them, 
it was therefore no wonder our sleep was rather broken. The longest 
night must come to an end, and so it did in this case, and at 
daybreak we were again in the scrubs. The birds were harder to 
get than before, and alter a hard day’s work we could only produce 
four male Rifles and a Torres Strait Fruit Pigeon. After another 
miserable night, our last day at the Barnards dawned upon us, and 
we were still at it; and when the Burdekin came to take us off, 
had secured two Mound-raising Megapodes. 
We had a little difficulty iu getting off, owing to the surf, 
but the sailors understood their work, and we were soon safely on 
board, bidding adieu for the last time to the scene of our labors. 
We had a rough passage back to cur old camp, which by this 
time seemed like home to us, arriving there wet and weary. 
We took altogether twenty-four Rifle Birds, the jargest number 
that has ever been taken on these Islands at one time. 
The time had now arrived for us to take our departure, which we 
did with many regrets. 
"We left Caldwell on the 12th of September, arriving in Melbourne 
on the 15th, after an absence of four months. 
Altogether we secured over a hundred species of birds, and about 
three hundred and fifty specimens. 
NOTES ON THE HABITS OF NATIVE BIRDS. 
By I. Barry, Sunpury. 
Read before the Field Naturalists’ Club of Victora, 13th Aug., 1885 
Parr I., Crows. 
Continued. 
In boyhood’s days, whenever we discovered a crow’s nest, one of 
us would tap the trunk of the tree with a stick, causing the bird to 
hop out on to a branch to ascertain the cause of the disturbance, 
