Mem. Nat. Mus. Vict., X, 1936. 
A SYSTEMATIC REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN 
THORNBILLS. 
By George Mack , 
Ornithologist, National Museum. 
No other group of Australian passerine birds has provided 
as many systematic difficulties as the Tits or Thornhills. This 
has resulted mainly from the paucity of specimens available 
to most authors in the past, and to the introduction over a 
period of years of many unnecessary names. The H. L. White 
Collection of Australian birds has greatly minimized the first 
of these difficulties, and it is the basis of the present effort to 
clarify the confusion in nomenclature; this collection has 
been supplemented by specimens in the general collection of 
the National Museum and by some excellent material kindly 
sent on loan by the Queensland, Australian, Tasmanian, South 
Australian and Western Australian Museums. About 700 
specimens have been examined. 
Within the genus Acanthiza as here defined Mathews alone 
has proposed about fifty names, more than half of which he 
has already consigned to synonymy (Syst. Av. Aust., 1930). 
In the present revision it has been necessary to retain only 
eleven of Mathews’ names, two of which replace preoccupied 
names. The number of genera and forms recognized by vari- 
ous authors during the past thirty years may be seen at a 
glance in the following table: 
Genus Subg. Species Subsp. 
North, Aust. Mus. Spec. Cat., i, 1901-04 . 
Mathews, Handlist, 1908 
Mathews, Syst. Av. Aust., 1930 . . 
Campbell, Emu, xxv, 1925 
R.A.O.U. Checklist (2nd ed.), 1926 
2 
— 
12 
? 
1 
— 
21 
— 
3 
— 
13 
48 
3 
1 
10 
70 
1 
— 
10 
53 
2 
— 
17 
? 
1 
2 
17 
— 
1 
— 
10 
34 
Since the completion in manuscript of this paper, Campbell 
has published notes and maps showing the distribution of the 
seventeen species recognized by him (Emu, xxxv, p. 324). 
Except on the east coast where three species range north- 
wards almost to the 15th parallel of latitude, the distribution 
of Australian Thornbills is chiefly extra-tropical, the approxi- 
mate northern limit being the 20th parallel of south latitude. 
86 
