4 RUDOLF SÖDERBERG, STUDIES OF THE BIRDS IN NORTH WEST AUSTRALIA. 
C. J. CAMPBELL has, it seems to me, summed up our knowledge of the bird 
world of Australia in the following words: 
»We know sufficient for the present of relationship of species and their eggs 
and other structuralities. We want to get at individualities, at the inner circle of 
the birds” existence.» In these few words he also indicates what a travelling ornitho- 
logist in studying the bird-world out in the field ought particularly to have in view. 
Besides making purely zoo-geographical observations, which always follow with 
a work like the present, I have, as far as possible, more particularly bestowed my 
attention on the difficult and time-consuming study of the bird-life, in relation to 
the peculiar external conditions. Thereby I also have attached importance to the 
moulting process, indead very neglected in such studies. As to the composition of 
the fauna we know the essentials even of the bird-world of Kimberley. Several 
ornithologists and collectors have travelled and made collections even in this remote 
part of the continent, though their operations, as is natural, have been confined to 
scattered and more or less limited districts. For our knowledge of the number of 
the species and their distribution they yet have been of great importance. 
Thus THOMAS CARTER has for thirteen years resided at Point Cloates (a spur, 
projecting from the base of N. W. Cape Peninsula); about the years 1880 and 
1890, T. H. BowYER-BoYER, in the years 1880 and later on manager of the Meda 
station, collected on the Fitzroy as far as Mt Anderson, 60 miles from Derby; in 
1897 the CALVERT expedition made collections also in the North-west; and J. P. 
ROGERS set out on the first of his many journeys in the Derby district in Nov. 1899 
and was the first man to visit the Obongama country. When I arrived in Kimberley 
he was still continuing his successful collecting. In August 1909 G. T. HILL visited 
the newly established mission-station (lat. 14” 6' S., long 126” 40' E.) on Napier Broome 
Bay and worked 10 months chiefly at ornithology. In 1902 RoBERT HALL made 
observations upon Towns End, Kightly Stewart and Robinson River, and the Obo- 
gama district; and in 1904 (or 1905) J. S. TUNNEY collected birds in the North-west 
and Arnhem land. 
Our expedition left Sweden on the 9th of July 1910, and we returned about 
Christmas 1911. The Equator was passed on the 27th of July, the Cape of Good 
Hope on the 7th of August. We arrived in Western Australia on the 9th of Sep- 
tember. Here I had the opportunity, in the museum of Perth, to make valuable 
