No. 7.] THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD 175 



WILLIAM DAVID KERR MACGILLIVRAY. 



Many years ago a man named Macgillivray worked steadily at 

 the study of ornithology in Scotland, and published a History 

 of British Birds, which did not meet with a good reception by 

 the English authorities. Nevertheless, as the author pointed 

 out, his treatment of the subject was novel and original and 

 the field notes were first hand. No better ornithologist has 

 yet been produced in the British Islands. One son, John, 

 became naturalist on the British surveying ships, and was a 

 true son of his father — a keen, thorough collector and observer. 

 Fate willed that he should visit Australia, at that time little 

 known, and he collected many new birds, which he sent to 

 Gould, who described and figured them in his Supplement, pub- 

 lishing Macgillivray's field notes in connection with them. 



Fifty years afterwards another Macgillivray of the same clan 

 became nearly as famous, strangely enough through discoveries 

 in almost the same district that the former Macgillivray had 

 visited. 



In 1852 George Macgillivray, third son of Alistair Mac- 

 gillivray, lineal chief of the Benchallader branch of the 

 Macgillivray clan, who had been born at Glenbervie, Aber- 

 deenshire, landed in Australia. In the same year, William 

 Macgillivray the elder, also an Aberdeen man, completed his 

 History of British Birds. William David Kerr Macgillivray, 

 the subject of these notes, was the third son of George Macgilli- 

 vray and his wife Janet Haxton, of Milnathort, Fifeshire, 

 Scotland. He was born at Kallara Station, River Darling, 

 New South Wales, on November 27, 1867, but in 1870 the 

 family removed to the " Gulf country," Queensland, a station 

 being taken up on Eastern Creek, a tributary of the Flinders. 

 This country was in an absolutely primeval state, unfenced and 

 open, with savage and treacherous natives around and the 

 nearest station forty miles away. Macgillivray's two elder 

 brothers were unable to play with him, the eldest working on 



