THE



215



Hvtcultural fllbagastne,


BEING THE JOURNAL OF THE


AVICULTURAL SOCIETY.



New Series .— VOL. 111. — No. 7. —All rights reserved. MAY, 1905.


THE YELLOW-RUMPED FINCH.


Munia fLaviprymna (Gould).


By D. Seth-Smith, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.


With the opening up of the more inaccessible parts of the

Australian Continent, the homes of some of the rarest birds are

invaded, and aviculturists on this side of the globe are given

an opportunity of keeping and studying species which were

never seen in a living state except by the most enterprising

explorers. It is not many years ago that Bathilda ruficauda and

Munia pedoralis were unknown to aviculturists in this country,

and the same might be said of Poephila acuticauda and P. per-

sonata, but at the present time all of these birds are common

occupants of the foreign-bird-lover’s aviary.


The subject of the present article cannot yet be called

common, but the arrival of about a dozen examples in London

is an important event in the history of foreign-bird keeping,

considering that even the preserved skin was almost unknown

before.


The Yellow-rumped Munia was described by Gould in

1845, from a single specimen obtained by Dr. Bynoe during the

surveying-voyage of the “ Beagle ” in 1839. All he was able to

tell about the species was that “ it is very nearly allied to the

Donacola \_Munia\ castaneithorax, but is specifically distinct from

that as well as from every known species of this now numerous

tribe of birds. I regret to add that nothing is known of its

habits or mode of life.” It seems uncertain what became of the

type, but an example obtained in 1856, by Mr. J. R. Elsie, is the

sole representative of the species in the British Museum, and in



