April, l94o 
The Queensland Naturalist 
93 
green). *Tamborine Mountain, July, 1925, Hilda Geiss- 
mann. 
Elsewhere known from New South Wales, Victoria, 
South Australia and Tasmania. It had been recorded as 
occurring in Queensland by F. M. Bailey in his Queens- 
land FI. v. 1577 (1902), but the specimen on which the 
record is based belongs to another species which has been 
determined by Rev. H. M. R. Rupp as P. obtusa R.Br. Mr. 
Rupp has kindly donated to the Queensland Herbarium 
one of the specimens collected by Miss Geissmann (Mrs. 
II. Curtis) and has verified the determination of my plant. 
He writes that the Queensland specimens have smaller 
flowers than are often met with in the southern States. 
THE RUFOUS WHISTLER— SOME NOTES ON SONG 
AND MIGRATION 
By NOEL JACK, |MH- Brisbane. 
Life histories of Australian birds are rare. When the 
shooter, the trapper, the tourist, the species hunter and 
that mythical authority, “the bushman,” have had their 
say, the fact remains that very little is known of the every- 
day life of even the most common of Australian birds. 
Association with one of the most talented of 
Australian songsters has prompted the above remarks. 
Pachyccphala rufiventris , in all his subspecific forms, 
should be known to the majority of Australians 
(Tasmanians excepted), and yet, with a few interesting 
exceptions, references to him in Australian literature are 
scarce, very casual, and in some cases, not very compli- 
mentary — for intsance, the inflicting of the title “Thick- 
head” upon the genus and the reference of a very early 
writer to some of the Rufous Whistler’s notes as resembling 
the “cries of a whipped dog!” 
In the south the Rufous-breast is a migrant. In 
Brisbane he is never absent from the district, but the 
observers cannot fail to notice an unmistakable variance 
in the numbers and behaviour of the Rufous Whistler 
population throughout the year. In fact, it would be a 
strange thing if he were not affected by the behavior of the 
rest of the feathered community. Many species participate 
in a semi-annual migration in the spring and autumn, a 
phenomenon which is of outstanding importance to the 
field naturalist, so far-reaching is its effect upon the avian 
