﻿entertaining little popular work entitled ' Bush Wanderings of a Naturalist,' by the late 

 Mr. II. Wheelwright, better known as the 'Old Bushman.' He relates as follows (p. 127) : — 



" About an hour before sunrise the bushman is awakened by the most discordant 

 sounds, as if a troop of fiends were shoviting, whooping, and laughing round him in one 

 wild chorus; this is the morning song of the 'Laughing Jackass,' warning his feathered 

 mates that daybreak is at hand. At noon the same wild laugh is heard, and as the sun 

 sinks into the west, it again rings through the forest. I shall never forget the first night 

 I slept in the open bush in tins country: it was in the Black Forest. I woke about day- 

 break after a confused sleep, and for some minutes I could not remember where I was, such 

 were the extraordinary sounds that greeted my ears ; the fiendish laugh of the Jackass, the 

 clear, flute-like note of the magpie; the hoarse cackle of the Wattle-birds; the jargon of 

 flocks of Leatherheads ; and the screaming of thousands of Parrots as they dashed through 

 the forest, all joining in chorus, formed one of the most extraordinary concerts I have ever 

 heard, and seemed at the moment to have been got up for the purpose of welcoming the 

 stranger to this land of wonders on that eventful morning. I have heard it hundreds of 

 times since but never with the same feelings that I listened to it then. The Laughing 

 Jackass is the bushman's clock, and being by no means shy, of a companionable nature, a 

 constant attendant about the bush-tent, and a destroyer of snakes, is regarded like the 

 Robin at home, as a sacred bird in the Australian forests. It is an uncouth-looking bird, a 

 huge species of land- Kingfisher, nearly the size of a crow, of a rich chesnut brown and 

 dirty white colour, the wings slightly chequered with light blue, after the manner of the 

 British Jay; the tail feathers long, rather pointed, and barred with brown. It has the foot 

 of the Kingfisher, a very formidable, long, pointed beak, and a large mouth ; it has also a 

 kind of crest which it erects when angry or frightened ; and this gives it a very ferocious 

 appearance. It is a common bird in all the forests throughout the year ; breeds in the hole 

 of a tree, and the eggs are white ; generally seen in pairs, and by no means shy ; their 

 principal food appears to be small reptiles, grubs and caterpillars. As I said before, it 

 destroys snakes. I never but once saw them at this game : a pair of Jackasses had disabled 

 a carpet-snake under an old gum-tree, and they sat on a dead branch above it, every now 

 and then darting down and pecking it, and by their antics and chattering seemed to con- 

 sider it a capital joke. I can't say whether they ate the snake — I fancy not ; at least the 

 only reptiles I ever found in their stomachs have been small lizards. The first sight that 

 struck me on landing in London was a poor old Laughing Jackass moped up in a cage, in 

 Kateliffe Highway: I never saw a more miserable, woe-begone object; I quite pitied my 

 poor old friend, as he sat dejected on his perch: and the thought struck me at the time that 

 we were probably neither of us benefited in changing the quiet freedom of the bush for the 

 noise and bustle of the modern Babylon." 



Mr. E. P. Ramsay kindly sends me a note to the effect that the average dimensions of 

 the eggs of Dacelo gt'jas are 1*65 inches by 1*4 in breadth. 



Mr. Keulemans lias been most happy in catching the attitude of the bird in the plate 

 of the present species, the figure being drawn from a living specimen in the Zoological 

 Gardens. Both races are illustrated in the plate, the nearer figure being taken from a 

 Queensland specimen, while the other is drawn from a bird procured by my friend Mr. J. 

 F. Butter, near Melbourne, and presented to me by that gentleman. 



