April, 1922 
The Queensland Naturalist. 
7r 
Australia •, a goodly proportioi] of such birds extend 
across the top of the continent, and at the Coburg Penin- 
sula they were taken by Gilbert. Incidentally, it is a strik- 
ing fact that Gilbert’s notes remain practically the only 
information we have regarding some of these birds at the 
present day — over eighty years later! 
But Queensland was to know John Gilbert more inti- 
mately than that. Returning from Port Essington, he took 
up where Gould left off in the sub-tropics, and we find him 
later on the wonderful Darling Downs, discovered by 
botanist Allan Cunningham some seventeen years previ- 
ously. It was on those downs that Gilbert discovered an 
essentially Queensland bird, the Scarlet-shouldered Par- 
rot/ described by Gould as one of the most beautiful 
Parrots he had ever seen, but which, alack, seems to have 
almost entirely disappeared from this thankless realm l 
Then, in 1844, Gilbert was at Moreton Bay, within a few 
miles of this room, when Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt came 
along to undertake his famous overland expedition from 
Moreton Bay to Port Essington. Leichhardt knew of Gould, 
and being anxious (he says) to render all service in his 
power to natural history, he gave way to Gilbert’s solicita- 
tions for a place in the party. 
Evidently Leichhardt had no cause to regret this deci- 
sion from a general viewpoint, for his Journal} contains 
numerous references to the services of the useful ornitho- 
logist, not the least of which was his skill in shooting birds 
for the pot. Practical evidence of the explorer’s apprecia- 
tion is shown in the bestowal of the ornithologist’s name 
on a range and a river. En passant , Leichhardt remarks 
that “Mr. Gilbert has travelled much, and consequently 
has a rich store of impressions de voyage ; his conversation 
is generally very pleasing and instructive in describing the 
characters of countries he has seen and the manners and 
customs of the people he has known. He is well informed in 
Australian ornithology.” 
Gilbert secured many new birds on the trip, of course, 
and everything appears to have been going well with him 
until 28th June, 1845. On that day, when the party was in 
the Gulf country, and within measurable distance of the 
spot! that Gilbert had made ornithological lv famous, the 
* Psephotus puicherrimns. 
t Journal of an Overland Expedition from Moreton Bay to 
Port Essington, by Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt; London, 18 4 7. 
*Port Essington. 
