WESTERN MUSK DUCK. 
we were very unsuccessful in taking them. A very peculiar one was 
shot, of a darkish grey plumage, with a bag like that of a lizard hanging 
under its throat, which smelt so intolerably of musk that it scented 
nearly the whole ship.” 
This fixes exactly the locality,, and I further found that Mr. Archibald 
Menzies was surgeon and botanist, and this is certainly the bird Shaw 
and Nodder described. All the synonyms were based upon this bird, so 
that no name is available for the Eastern bird as I named the Western 
form also, accepting the wrong East t3rpe locality. 
In the Proc. Zool. Soc. (Lond.) 1834, p. 19, there is a letter from Lieut. 
Breton stating : “ These birds are so extremely rare, that he saw only 
three of them during his various excursions, which extended over twelve 
hundred miles of country. He had never heard of any instance in 
which more than two were seen together. They are met with only on 
the rivers, and in pools left in the otherwise dry beds of streams. It is 
extremely difficult to shoot them, on account of the readiness with which 
they dive : the instant the trigger is drawn, the bird is under water.” 
Mr. Tom Carter writes : “A common species throughout the South- 
west, but only once seen by me in the Mid-west. December 10, 1912. 
I saw one on the Roads Board water tank (about twenty yards square) 
close to Broome Hfil township and alongside a much frequented high road.” 
Mr. A. W. Milligan {E7nu, Vol. II., p. 106, 1902) has observed : “ A 
company of these birds, numbering some eight or nine, were moving about 
the shallows on the South Perth side, about 100 yards from the course 
of the ferry boat. My attention was drawn by a succession of ‘ ponks,’ 
intermingled with similar monosyllabic notes, which appeared to be the same 
sound stripped of its resonance. The surmise proved to be correct, as I 
plainly perceived. The ‘ ponk ’ followed the action of the bird (which 
appeared to be the male bird disporting himself before the females) when he 
thrust his head quickly under the water. Simultaneously with the thrusting 
of the head under the water the bird struck the water with tlie feet 
and swished the tail. The lighter and less resonant sound was uttered 
above water, and was accompanied with -a prolongation of the neck and a 
lateral swish of the tail. It is quite probable that the striking of the water 
with the foot, mentioned in the former case, has given rise to the local idea 
that the sound was produced by such action and not in the normal way.” 
In the Austral Avian Record^ Vol. I., p. 87, 1912, I separated the Eastern 
form from the Western Musk Duck, and accepting the Eastern bird as typical, 
named the Western one. In my List of the Birds of Australia, 1913, p. 94, I 
lumped them as there did not seem to be enough differences, as the species 
VOL. IV. 
145 
