176 THE AUSTRAL AVIAN RECORD [Vol. III. 



the station, and the other being invalided with malaria. As a 

 consequence, he made friends with the small black piccaninnies 

 of his own age, and went out with them learning all their ways 

 and methods of hunting for food, etc. The difference between 

 the civilised product and the aborigine soon showed itself, as 

 the former began collecting and preserving all the peculiar 

 specimens of natural history he found, whereas the latter never 

 did such a thing. A recess at the end of the house became 

 the " Museum," and butterflies and beetles were pinned over 

 the walls, and stones and fossils were stored there. Eggs and 

 the young of lizards were brought in : the former were hatched 

 and the latter reared. In like manner to the blacks, young 

 Macgillivray became an expert at collecting birds and animals 

 by means of sticks and stones. One day, when with his eldest 

 brother and the small blacks, a Grallina was flushed from its 

 nest and his brother suggested that the younger should start 

 an egg collection, giving him two eggs out of the nest, leaving 

 the other two for the bird. Then began an egg collection 

 which must at that time have contained many eggs not taken 

 by any other collector. 



Mr. William Armit, whose name is preserved in connection 

 with Poephila armitiana Ramsay, passed the station and became 

 interested in the boy's collection, and when he returned to 

 Brisbane sent him some sheet cork, pins, and a copy of Balfour's 

 Elements of Botany. The latter helped in defining groups of 

 plants and was soon learned by heart. The only bird books 

 were those of British birds with pictures, which, however, 

 enabled the young ornithologist to group the local birds into 

 such classes as Hawks, Owls, Finches, Parrots, Kingfishers, 

 etc. At this time Macgillivray many times witnessed the 

 marvellous nights of the harlequin Bronzewings, a bird which 

 in those days inhabited the Mitchell grass plains in countless 

 flocks, but which is now nearly, if not quite, extinct. Galah's 

 and Bare -eyed Cockatoos were also numerous, but these have 

 held their own with the settlement of the country ; and recently 

 Macgillivray again saw an irruption of thousands of Budgerigars 

 nesting all along the creeks a little more south than his boy- 

 hood's station. 



