KUNGL. SV. VET. AKADEMIENS HANDLINGAR. BAND 52. N:o |7. 7 
Such circumstances made it necessary to choose for purposes of study regions 
where nature in some measure presented various features. The places which we visited 
after our stay at Mowla Downs had also to some extent different geographical cha- 
racteristies, and therefore we did not confine our study of the bird-fauna of North 
West Australia only to the region along the Fitzroy-river or its branches to the mountains 
of the desert. It follows, of course, that while travelling, we had opportunities to 
observe and to collect. 
By Christmas my companion and I turned back to Derby, induced by diffi- 
culties caused by rains and want of food. Here and there the ground was already very 
difficult to pass, and the river was in flood and had to be crossed on floats; further- 
(The autor phot.) 
Fig. 2. Our camp at Mowla Downs. 
more our scanty store of flour was consumed. In the beginning of January, 1911, 
the missionary S. HADLEY was kind enough to lend us his sailing boat, a pearl-fishing 
vessel, on which we visited the island-world outside the Kings Sound and continued 
our researches there, particularly in the island which the missionary — the solitary 
white man — inhabited together with 150 natives, namely Sunday Island (J3” on 
the map). 
Besides the land-fauna of the islands I had an opportunity of becoming ac- 
quainted with the bird-life of the tide-zone. The tide here rises to 14—17 yards. 
On the 8th of March, after two months stay on Sunday Island, we arrived 
again in Derby. My researches were continued in this region and at the coast, in- 
terrupted, however, by illness (appendicitis), until the 19th of April 1911, when our 
companions arrived from Nooncanbah, a cattle-station about 100 miles up the 
Fitzroy river. Before LAURELL had set out on his long trip to the Leopold range 
(april —july). 
