THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Capt. S. A. White’s notes read : “ During my wanderings in Tasmania 
I have never found this bird really plentiful, but scattered over all the 
mountainous country, for they love the deep, dark, damp, fern-clad gullies 
and here they nest and bring up their young. Sitting motionless on the front 
of a tree-fern, a beautiful male bird will flit after a passing insect and back 
again without a sound save the snap of its bill, so in keeping with the dim, 
silent gullies, the bird’s habitat.” 
In 1912 I separated the mainland form on account of its smaller size and 
darker coloration above and the two races can be easily distinguished, so I 
still admit : 
Erythrodryas rodinogaster rodinogaster (Drapiez). 
Tasmania. 
Erythrodryas rodinogaster inexpectata (Mathews). 
Victoria. 
It should be noted that Gould wrote : “In one instance only did I meet 
with it on the continent, in a deep ravine under Mount Lofty in South Australia ; 
I shot the specimen, which on dissection proved to be a young male.” Some 
authors have therefore included South Australia in its range, but neither 
E. Ashby nor Captain S. A. White, who have sent me many very valuable 
notes, seem to have met with it in that State. 
