THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
to bear a very general resemblance of the females of P. gutturalis and P. 
glaucuraP In this last guess Gould proved wrong. 
Mr. J. P. Rogers has written me: “This is a common species in the 
mangroves, and I have never seen it elsewhere. These birds are very 
inquisitive ; if one whistles or makes a noice they will come within two 
or three yards and remain a considerable time. Some have bred (February 
1911, Derby) but I only got one egg, as I was too late. I believe their real 
breeding-season is February and March, as in the end of the latter month 
I saw many young near Derby jetty about nine years ago.” 
I sent birds from Derby to Witmer Stone for comparison with the type, 
and he recorded that they “ agreed absolutely,” so I fixed that as the type 
locality. 
Hall had previously published Rogers’s earlier notes : “It has a note 
similar to, but less powerful than P. falcata. It keeps very much to mangrove 
vegetation, searching much among the debris left by the tides. It may search 
for insects head downwards when among the branches, but for the position 
has not the grace of that of a Honey-eater. 
Mr. A. J. Campbell has recently written under the name P. melanura = (P. 
m. bynoei ) : “ Two S3, 3 $,$, Cossack. Whitlock had previously (1917) collected 
a mature female. The females have all the light yellow (lemon-chrome) under 
tail-coverts, which obviously separate them from those of occidentalis (Ramsay) 
in the south and from the true melanura in the north. The Cossack birds may 
even be considered a distinct species. However, Mathews has made it a sub- 
species of melanura , the females of which have, when mature, the full yellow 
breast of rich lemon-chrome.” 
This is a good instance of Mr. A. J. Campbell’s misreading of my state- 
ments and conclusions, which, continued, become misleading. I had separated 
as a distinct species in the paper quoted by Campbell the bird he is dealing 
with from Cossack, and accepted it as the true melanura of Gould, since 
Witmer Stone had so identified specimens I sent him. The birds with the 
females with “ the full yellow breast ” I called robusta, and I did not class 
the Cossack bird as a subspecies of that species. 
There are only two subspecies known, the species being restricted to the 
North-west coast from Point Cloates to Derby. 
Pachycephala melanura melanura Gould. 
Derby, North-west Australia. 
Pachycephala melanura bynoei Mathews. 
Port Hedland, mid-West Australia. 
I noted that the male differs in having the tail with a distinct wash of 
green toward the base of the inner webs, the outer basal edges also tinged 
232 
