April, 1922 
The Queensland Naturalist, 
07 
recently in the Emu that any English boy is prepared 
to talk of Black Swans, Emus, Galahs, Lyre-birds, and 
•“the bird that laughs at you.” The only other Australian 
things that are equally household property in England, 
.according to Mr. Wilson, are the boomerang, Victor Trum- 
per (still an idol), the Kangaroo, and the Platypus! We 
need more of this appreciation closer home — more of the 
fresh, wondering interest taken in our entertaining fauna 
by the men of old. 
When the idea occurred of presenting a paper on the 
rise and progress of ornithology in Queensland, it seemed 
that the task would not be an onerous one. A little re- 
search, however, caused a change of view. It early became 
apparent that the history of ornithology in this country 
is so interwoven with the history of the country itself — 
that is, its record in exploratory enterprise — that, if jus- 
tice was to be done the subject, one must look more or less 
closely into the history of pioneering in Queensland, both 
before and after its separation from the mother colony of 
New South Wales. 
It should be pointed out here that man-made boun- 
'daries are no concern of care-free wild birds. They fre- 
quent the class of country best suited to their needs and 
that needs them most. That, in a sentence, explains why 
it is not right to claim, as we frequently do, many kinds 
of beautiful birds to be ‘ 4 true-blue ’ ’ Queenslanders. In- 
deed, there are few species of Australian birds confined 
to the political limits of any one State. Queensland is 
better off than other States in this respect; but even so, 
many of the bird-species that we have come to regard as 
“ours” are shared in the South by the sub-tropical jungle 
areas of New South Wales, and in the North by New 
Guinea and the Northern Territory. It is necessary to 
make this general point in order to clear what appears 
to be an anomaly — i.e., that the great majority of birds 
which have their headquarters in Queensland were named * 
from specimens taken outside our boundaries. 
It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss the 
value of the claims that Chinese and French, respectively, 
touched Northern Australia several centuries ago. We know, 
of course, that representatives of Portugal, Spain, and Hol- 
land did actually reach our Northern shores well before 
Captain Cook — Spanish and Dutch place-names, relics of 
16th and 17th Century exploration, are particularly plenti- 
