THE BIRDS OE AUSTRALIA. 
In a large valley nearer the township of Denham I found a family of Grass- 
Wrens. ... I found the Grass-Wrens on Per on just as wary and difficult to 
observe as those at Lake Austin and Lake Way. The reason they are still 
present on Peron appears to be the abundance of rabbits on which the bush 
cats prey in preference to birds.” 
If Whitlocks’ experience is confirmed, and the Dirk Hartog birds have 
been exterminated by cats in these few years, the bird wall prove almost as 
as interesting as Dieffenbach’s Rail. This Rail lived at the Chatham Islands, 
off New Zealand, in considerable numbers, and a specimen was procured by 
Dr. Dieffenbach about 1840, which is now in the British Museum. Before another 
ornithologist visited the Islands the species had become extinct and the British 
Museum specimen is unique. If Carter had not visited the island when he did 
the same story might have been exactly written. 
Gould described Amytis macrourus and wrote : “ The present is the only 
species of the genus that has been discovered in Western Australia ; two 
examples were shot in the interior by Gilbert, who states that ‘ it inhabits 
the thickets, and is almost always on the ground, moving about in families of 
from four to seven in number ; it carries its tail more erect than any other bird 
I have seen, and certainly no bird runs or rather hops over the surface of the 
ground with greater rapidity.’ It is evidently the representative of the Amytis 
textilis of the eastern coast, to which it is very nearly allied, but from which, 
as well as from the A. striatus, it may at once be distinguished by its more robust 
form, and by the much greater length and size of its tail.” 
His description reads : “ All the upper-surface brown, each feather with 
a narrow stripe of white down the centre ; under-surface the same, but much 
paler ; under-surface of the shoulder pale rusty-red ; tail brown, margined 
with pale brown ; irides hazel ; base of the lower mandible horn-colour, 
remainder of the bill black ; feet flesh-brown. Total length 5| inches, bill J, 
wing 2 1, tail 2-|, tarsi f-.” 
Some of the measurements are wrong, a not uncommon failing in connection 
with Gould’s work. Thus the tail of macrourus is of “ much greater length and 
size ” than that of striatus , which Gould gives as 3|, and the total length is 
obviously wrong. 
Milligan’s gigantura approximates much more closely to Gould’s macrourus 
in detail as follows : — 
macrourus T.l. 5J, error, say 7f in. gigantura 7 ‘25 inches 
bill \ inch 
*5 inch 
wing 2f- inches 
2-75 inches 
tail 2|, error, or 3f4- 
3*75 inches 
tarsi | inch 
•95 inch 
178 
