THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
seen in any patch of greenery eagerly searching for insects, but they certainly 
come in for a good deal of condemnation from the fruit growers during summer. 
In the autumn they flock, and presumably a good many leave, but. their place 
is probably taken by others from further south, for there are numbers with 
us all the winter. Flocks are not infrequently heard going over at night. 
A few yearn ago a flock of about 100 were making a great to-do one evening 
about sundown. Twice they started off, only to be recalled by waverers for 
further argument; for the third time the flock moved off, and got away about 
100 yards, when with many shrill cries about one-third of them returned, 
but the main body kept on towards the north.” 
The technical history of this common species is somewhat complicated. 
Hr theu account of Australian Birds in the Collection of the Linnaean Society 
Vigors and Horsfield introduced a new genus Zosterops for a species of 
“ Warbler ” which they called Zosterops dorsalis, and recognised as the same 
species Swainson’s Sylvia annulosa var B. Swainson wrote: “ On first 
receiving this bird from New' Holland, I was inclined to t hink it a distinct 
species from the African White-eyed Warbler, but further consideration has 
led me to adopt a different opinion ; if true I am unacquainted with any one 
land bird which is common to both countries, and much weight should he 
attached to the geographic distribution both of families and species. These 
two birds, however, differ in their colour, and somewhat hi their size. . . 
On the whole, therefore, I am inclined to consider them as varieties of one 
species, forming a solitary exception to the general dissimilarity between 
the birds of Africa and those of New Holland.” The coloured figure given 
is of the summer plumage. 
Vigors and Horsfield had no hesitation in accepting the observed 
differences as of specific value and named it as above. Gould figured the species 
under Vigors’ and Horsfield’s specific name, their genus being universally 
accepted almost as soon as published. 
When Gray examined the Lambert drawings he recognised the one upon 
which Latham had based his Gerthia ccerulescens as a Zosterops, indicating 
Zosterops tenuirostris Gould as the species ; then from the Lambert figure 
of Sylvia lateralis Latham, Gray proposed to use Zosterops lateralis for the 
Zosterops dorsalis of Vigors and Horsfield. 
Gould, apparently influenced by Strickland, determined ccerulescens as 
also applicable to the present species, and as it had anteriority of position 
utilised it in preference to lateralis. Sharpe, when he monographed the 
Zosteropidse for Gadow r , in the ninth volume of the Catalogue of Birds in the 
British Museum, without reading the descriptions and without the paintings 
upon which they w’ere based, used ccerulescens. 
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