The Queensland Naturalist. 
April, 1922 ‘ 
70 
deceiving them, which we have very little reason to sup- 
pose, as we never saw any instrument with them with which’ 
a bird could be killed or taken, except their lances, and: 
these must be very improper tools for the purpose.” The 
genial botanist, it will be seen, was a little shallow in his 
reasoning on both birds and “Indians” (the Australian; 
blacks). Nevertheless, his was a prominent figure in Aus- 
tralian history, and it is good to have his name commemo- 
rated with one of our Black Cockatoos, Calyptorynchus 
banksii. 
So far as I have been able to ascertain, there is a 
hiatus of over forty years* between those initial notes by 
Cook and Banks, and the time when definite ornithological 
work was carried out within the present borders of Queens- 
land. And so we come to the time of Gould and Gilbert. 
John Gould, the bird-man whose name will ever stand at 
the head of Australian ornithology, first came to this 
country, accompanied by John Gilbert, in the year 1838, 
There is little need to say much of the great Gould, whose 
books speak of his work; moreover, it would seem that we 
can only lay claim to him zoologically, for his activities 
centred in Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, and New 
South Wales, and he does not appear to have reached any 
further north than the Richmond and Clarence rivers. 
With Gould ; s able coadjutor, Gilbert, however, the 
history of Queensland ornithology is closely associated. 
As Gould was concerned with ornithology rather than 
history, he gives no definite dates as to Gilbert’s move- 
ments. It seems that this worker went first to West 
Australia, revisited England, and on returning to Aus- 
tralia was sent by Gould to Port Essington, situated on 
the Coburg Peninsula, a few miles north-east of the present 
Port Darwin. That was in the early forties of last cen- 
tury. The visit was made possible by the fact that the 
Governor of the day in New South Wales had established 
a military settlement at that outpost in 1831, one that was 
destined to continue until 1849. It was the creation of that 
short-lived settlement — a picturesque event in Australian 
history — that enabled John Gould to describe many of our 
North Queensland birds in his great work, The Birds of 
* It is curious that little work among birds was carried out under 
the famous commands of Capt. Win. Bligh (1788-1792), Captain 
Matthew Flinders (1791-1802), and Capt. Philip Parker King (1819- 
1821), all of whom — or their companies — must have had excellent 
opportunities in an ornithologicaliy virgin land. Capt. King, how- 
ever, was responsible for the discovery of one new Northern bird, the - 
beautiful Yellow Oriole. 
