146 
TIMELIINJE. 
wholly of grasses loosely thrown together without being interwoven 
more than is necessary to keep them in their place; the structure 
would hardly bear removal ; the lining is of hair or fur of the 
“ Rabbit-rat ” Lagorchestes, it is five inches in diameter by three 
and a-quarter across outside, with no hood over the opening; the 
structure was placed on its side among the twigs of a small shrub 
with grass growing through its branches near the ground and 
hidden by the grass. The eggs are of a dull olive-brown, of a 
nearly uniform bronze tint, usually without markings, one specimen 
has an indistinct ring of minute dots on the larger end forming 
a patch of a darker shade, the eggs are three or four in 
number, length 0'78 x 0 - 59 inch ; 0 - 78 x (K58 inch; 0'79 x 0 - 58 
inch.” Dobr. Mas. (Ramsay , P.L.S., N.S. )( r ., Vol. vii., p. 49.) 
Hub. New South Wales, Interior, Victoria and South Australia, 
West and South-West Australia. (Ramsay.) 
Genus MEGALUEUS, Rorsfield. 
MEGALURUS GRAMINEUS, Gould. 
Little Grass Bird. 
Gould , Handblc. Bds. Aust., Vol. i., sp. 245, p. 400. 
This little bird was at one time very common in the vicinity of 
Melbourne, frequenting and breeding freely in the tufts of rushes 
that skirt the edges of the sheets of water in the Government 
Domain, Botanical Gardens, and the southern portion of the 
Albert Park lake, also in the Melaleuca scrub that formerly 
clothed the sides of the Lower Yarra. The site chosen for the 
nest is somewhat varied, I have usually taken it from the 
bottom of a clump of long rushes within eight inches of the water 
but not unfrequently in the upright pronged fork of a Melaleuca, 
about five feet from the ground, when growing in wet and swampy 
localities. 
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