THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
Harvey Brothers wrote from Mackay, North Queensland: “ Tins noisy 
Honey-eater is usually found in the vicinity of scrub, where it lives chiefly on 
honey extracted from blossoms, varying its diet occasionally with insects and 
berries. It builds a cup-shaped nest of tea-tree bark adorned with spiders’ 
cocoons. The nest is generally placed in the top of some vine-covered sapling 
in or near the scrub. The two eggs which form the clutch are pure white with 
a few specks of dark brown at the larger end.” 
Captain S. A. White, reporting on the birds observed on the Bunya Moun¬ 
tains, Queensland, wrote : “ This bird was very numerous, and met with in 
nearly every situation. Its great range of notes are all very pleasing, but are 
so varied that one often has to pause and listen to make sure of the bird.” 
Campbell was puzzled by the northern forms and wrote in connection 
with the birds of Rockingham Bay district: “ We found this a fairly common 
species. It frequented the flowering citrus trees of gardens, and came into 
outhouses and even dwellings after fruit; hence sometimes the local name 
of ‘ Banana Bird.’ In the open the bird fossicked various native flowers, 
including the olive-green floriferous heads of a climbing Pisonia (P. aculeata). 
These flowers, judging by the hum of insects (including a big ‘ bumble bee ’) 
about them, must be heavily charged with nectar. Several nests of the Honey- 
eater were taken on the coast-land, and birds observed, but the nest which 
we were ‘ shepherding ’ on the table-land was destroyed by some evil thing. 
The table-land birds were more tuneful, and frequently gave the characteristic 
trilling whistle of lewinii, which we never heard the lowland birds give. There¬ 
fore, we thought the lowland variety might be possibly P. notata , but the only 
skin obtained in that locality proved to be lewinii. Could the commonly 
reputed notata of collectors, after all, be a northern form only of the widely 
distributed leidnii ? We regretted we did not get more material while on the 
spot.” 
Gould wrote: “ This bird is certainly the Meliphaga chrysotis of Lewin’s 
Birds of New Holland, where it is beautifully figured, but it is equally certain 
that it does not correspond with Latham’s description of his Certhia chrysotis 
as given in his General History ; neither is it figured by Vieillot in his Oiseaux 
Dores, to which Latham refers. I shall, therefore, adopt the specific name 
Lewinii proposed for it by Swainson.” 
This was in Ins “ Handbook,” as previously he had called this bird Ptilotis 
chrysotis, and apparently the rectification was due to the examination of the 
Lambert drawings where he saw a picture named as Latham’s species. 
There has been much confusion in connection with tliis species, so I quote 
Latham’s account: 
“ Certhia chrysotis Latham, Suppl. Index Ornith., p. xxxviii., 1801. 
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