29 
The eggs of C. funereus vary somewhat in size and are rounded 
in form, pure white, except where stained with the decaying wood 
on which they were laid, the shell being dull and lustreless, and 
having minute shallow pittings all over them ; they measure (A) 
l - 82 x 1*49 inch; (B) 1’9 x T6 inch. 
The range of this species extends over Eastern and Southern 
Australia and Tasmania, although in the latter colony Gould 
separated the species from C. funereus, under the name of C. 
xanthonolus, but the specific characters are not constant, speci¬ 
mens having been received from Tasmania that could not be 
distinguished from the continental form, and Dr. Ramsay who 
has examined one of Gould’s types, states they are identical. 
POLYTELIS ALEXANDRA, Gould. 
The Princess of Wales Parrakeet. 
Gould, Handbk. Bds. Austr., Vol. ii., 1865, sp. 407, p. 32. 
Much attention has recently been drawn to this the rarest of 
all the Australian Psittaci. It was first discovered by Mr. F. G 
Waterhouse at Howell’s Ponds, in Lat. about 17° S. and Long. 
133° E. who accompanied Stuart, the well known Central Austra¬ 
lian explorer in 1862. Gould described it in the following year 
in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, dedicating it to the 
Princess of Wales, and subsequently figuring it in his Supplement 
to the Birds of Australia, in 1869. 
Aiter a lapse of twenty-eight years since discovering this 
species, Mr. M. Symonds Clark, of Adelaide, South Australia, 
brought under the notice of the public, through the columns of 
the South Australian Register of the 28th of August, 1890, the 
existence of two living specimens of Polylelis alexandrce, which 
had been taken from a nest in the hollow branch of a tree by 
Mr. T. G. Magarcy at “ Crown Point,” about fifty miles north of 
“Charlotte Waters,” in Lat. 25° 30' and Long. 133°, about six 
hundred miles south from where the type specimens were obtained. 
Later on Dr. E. C. Stirling, the Director of the Adelaide Museum, 
