ADDITION TO AVIFAUNAS NORTH. 
37 
To begin with Tasmania, Dr. L. Holden of Circular Head, 
informs me that at the latter end of April of this year, he shot in 
that locality a fine adult male Blue-billed Duck, Erismatura 
australis , Gould, which is now in the Collection of the newly 
formed Launceston Museum. This is the first time the bird has 
been recorded from Tasmania, its range being previously limited 
to New South Wales, Victoria, South and West Australia, over 
which it is rather sparingly dispersed. 
Through the liberality of the same gentleman, the Trustees of 
the Australian Museum have just received the skin of a male 
New Zealand Shoveller, Spatula variegata , Gould, that was 
obtained amongst others of the same species by Mr. Thomas Carr, 
on the 20th of June, 1892, at One Tree Point, on the river Tamar 
near Launceston ; numerous individuals of which were seen in the 
neighbourhood during the past winter. This species may be 
distinguished from the Spatula rhynchotis of Australia and Tas- 
mania, to which it is closely allied, by being less robust and slightly 
smaller in its admeasurements ; the feathers of the lower portion 
of the neck and mantle are white instead of fulvous brown, the 
short scapulars also have a larger amount of white on them, and 
the elongated scapulars are plume-like and more conspicuously 
marked with a broader lanceolate satiny-white stripe. The single 
male bird received from Mr. Walter Mantell in 1856 upon which 
Gould founded the species is evidently an exceptional one, if his 
figure of it in the “Supplement to the Birds of Australia,” pi. lxxx, 
be correct ; it shows a far larger amount of white upon the lower 
portion of the neck, mantle, scapulars, and breast than specimens 
since obtained in New Zealand or the one at present under con- 
sideration ; the latter being similar in size and slightly brighter in 
colour to a mounted specimen in the Museum, obtained from the 
North Island of New Zealand, and approaching nearer to the figure 
given by Sir Walter Lawry Buller in his Birds of New Zealand, 
2nd edition, Vol. ii. pi. xliii. p. 269, which he stated has been 
taken from a “fine male ... in the best condition of plumage.” With 
the specimen sent from Tasmania, a box containing a number of 
small fresh-water shells was forwarded, marked “ taken from the 
gullet of Spatula variegata” and which I have handed to my 
colleague Mr. John Brazier for examination, who has determined 
them to belong to the following species : — Tatea rufilabris , A. 
Adam, found in Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, New South 
Wales, and Queensland ; Bithynella simsoniana , Brazier, and 
Assiminea bicincta , Petterd, both peculiar to Tasmania. 
Dr. P. Herbert Metcalfe, the Resident Medical Officer at 
Norfolk Island has also forwarded to me for identification, the skins 
of three birds which he obtained on that island during April and 
May of this year, one a fully adult specimen of the White Heron 
Herodis egretta , Gmelin ( H. syrmatophorus , Gould), which has an 
