304 
Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
List of West Australian Birds, showing their Geo- 
graphical Distribution throughout Australia, includ- 
ing Tasmania. By A. J. Campbell, F.L.S. Communi- 
cated by Rev. James MacGregor, D.D., F.R.S. Edin. 
(With a Map). 
(Read June 16, 1890.) 
“ There were hut few land fowls. We saw none but eagles of the 
larger sort of birds, but five or six sorts of small birds. The biggest 
sort of these were not bigger than larks, some no bigger than wrens, 
all singing with great variety of fine shrill notes ; and we saw some 
of their nests with young ones in them. The water-fowls were 
ducks (which had young ones now, this being the beginning of the 
spring in these parts), curlews, guldens, crab-catchers, cormorants, 
gulls, pelicans, and some water-fowl such as I have not seen any- 
where besides.” Such are the quaint remarks of the celebrated 
British navigator, Captain William Dampier, when in Shark’s Bay, 
August 1699, on his second visit to New Holland. This is probably 
the first recorded note of the avi-fauna of Western Australia, or 
indeed of any part of Australia, if we except Ylaming, who two 
years previously introduced into Europe the black swan for the 
first time. Ylaming in 1697 discovered and named the Swan 
River (upon which Perth, the capital of Western Australia, stands), 
on account of the number of these exceedingly handsome birds he 
found upon that water. 
Gilbert, the worthy coadjutor of the immortal John Gould, 
between the years 1839-42 worked up the bulk of the ornitho- 
logical notes of Western Australia which we are in possession 
of, and which are embodied in Gould’s Birds of Australia. By 
reason of the number of aboriginals he had to assist him, Gilbert’s 
work was very accurate and complete. On the 28th June 1845, 
poor Gilbert met a premature death at the hands of treacherous 
natives during Leichardt’s expedition to North Australia. Gould 
pathetically adds, “and so I lost an able coadjutor and science a 
devoted follower.” 
Then George Masters, assistant curator of the Australian 
Museum, Sydney, on two occasions, and Cockerell on his own 
