66 THE NATURALIST IN AUSTRALIA. 
cabin, and, after due admonition, was released on parole. The author's Firetailed 
finches did not dance to one another, as do the Poephile, but, at the same time, 
one especially fine little fellow, the hero of the previous episode, would hop 
up and down opposite to his own image in a mirror, and, to indulge his peculiar 
predilection, he had a small piece of looking-glass fixed to his cage. This bird 
would also sometimes dance in a similar manner on the table to his owners, with a 
piece of grass or cotton in his beak. This particular bird, like one of the Poephile, 
was a most confirmed and crusty bachelor, or possibly was only awaiting the advent 
of his astral affinity. At any rate, he behaved so tyrannically to all other comrades, 
both male and female, as to necessitate the provision of a separate establishment, 
in which he was familiarly distinguished by the somewhat derogatory title of 
“the Gaol bird.” 
Among the claimants for recognition as Australian songsters, a prominent 
place must be allotted to the common House-swallow of Western Australia, Hirundo 
neoxena, whose melody always struck me as being considerably more varied and 
prolonged than that of its European congener. A company of these birds, seated 
in a row along the street telegraph wires just outside the hotel window, as commonly 
happens in an Australian township, will regale you with a most recherché serenade. 
As a combined symphony, however, there are probably no birds that produce so 
singularly pleasing an effect as the little Bell-bird, Myzanthus melanophrys, of the 
Southern Colonies. The Gippsland district of Victoria is especially favoured with 
its presence. Riding through the dense eucalyptus forests of that province, the 
traveller, such being the writer's experience, suddenly comes upon a spot, commonly 
a glade near a running stream, from whence on all sides he is greeted with, as it 
were, the tinkling of little silver bells, all harmoniously blending with one another, 
though differing individually in their precise timbre. A hasty glance around fails 
to discover the authors of the fairy music, and it is only by a painstaking search 
that the hidden musicians are revealed in the form of a small olive-yellow bird 
that is most difficult to detect among the masses of foliage of the same tint. 
Some of the exquisite little so-called Australian Wrens, genus Malurus, are by 
no means indifferent songsters, and are so naturally tame that, by imitating their 
note as nearly as possible with the mouth, they can be attracted to within a few 
feet distance only of the observer. In shape, size and deportment these little birds 
very closely resemble the English and European Long-tailed Titmouse, Aigithalus 
vagans, but are far more resplendently arrayed, their gay liveries including tints in which, 
