THE ALBERT LYllE-BIRD. 
83 
feeds. Its gizzard is strong and muscular^ and can reduce 
with ease the hard coverings of beetles and even the shells 
of snails, which are frequently found in their stomachs. 
The female is similarly coloured to the male, but wants the 
fine lyre-shaped tail. The brown plumage, the rufous chin, 
the long handsome tail of the male, with its sixteen feathers, 
' — fourteen of which are very light and loose- webbed, and the 
two middle ones wide and graceful, the tips black, and the 
edge of the inner vane brown and barred with darker brown, 
— combined with the longish feathered head, give this bird an 
attractive appearance, w^hich is not readily described. 
A second species of this fine genus was described by the 
ornithologist of Australia at a meeting of the Zoological 
Society on the 5th of Pebruary, 1850. Mr. Gould named 
the species Menura Alherti, the Albert Lyre-bird (Plate VI. 
fig. 2), after his Royal Highness Prince Albert ; and from 
the supplemental part of his great work ^ the Birds of Aus- 
tralia,^ we derive our notice of this bird. 
Mr. Strange, Drs. Bennett and Stephenson at once ob- 
served it to be different from the long-known Lyre-bird. Its 
plumage is rufous, and the 1 \ re-shaped tail-feathers want the 
brown bars, which mark these light and elegant plumes in 
the other species. These feathers are shorter too than the 
