Vol. XXIV. “I 
1925. J 
CHISHOLM, Fairy Warbler 
163 
Closely following North's' denial of the species came a state¬ 
ment by the late C. W. De Vis, curator of the Queensland 
Museum. He, in 1905 (Ann. Qld. Mus., Vol. 6, p. 41), admitted 
that there were good grounds for doubting the validity of Gery- 
gone flavida, but decided, after close consideration and inspection 
of the type, that the species was sound. Incidentally, he men¬ 
tioned two characters not included in Ramsay's description but 
present in the species, an orbital ring and a very pale, almost 
white, chin and upper throat. “The whiteness of the throat," he 
added, “is most decided in adult males; these have many feathers 
of the chin entirely white or nearly so. A few white feathers 
occur in most young males and females, but to judge from mate¬ 
rial at hand it is but seldom, even among females, that the 
throat can be said to be yellow." 
The next development in the problem came as a result of the 
visit made to Cardwell in 1916 by Messrs. A. J. Campbell and 
H. G. Barnard, acting on behalf of Mr. H. L. White. In their 
Emu paper on the trip, these ornithologists recorded that from 
their field observations, they agreed with De Vis, that Gerygone 
flavida was a distinct species, this despite the fact that “some of 
our best authorities entertain the opinion that G. flavida is the 
female of G. personata, which is found from the Endeavour 
River northwards to Cape York, the male of which possesses the 
dark throat and forehead." They found several nests near 
Cardwell, and procured a mated pair of birds which were both 
without black on the throat. (An incidental remark that “Ram¬ 
say did not observe the bird" is evidently an error, for Ramsay 
says in his original note, “I shot it in 1874.") A. J. Campbell 
supplies, too, a good picture of the “Yellow" Flyeater’s nest in 
proximity to a wasps’ nest. 
In the light of these observations (to say nothing of Ramsay’s 
original description) it is surprising that Mr. G. M. Mathews, in 
his Birds of Australia (Vol. 8, 1920) fell into the rather startling 
error of figuring the wrong bird as G. flavida, Mathews, it 
would seem, had become confused through getting the impression 
that Ramsay’s bird had the black throat patch, albeit “indistinct 
and ill-defined"; and when he got other specimens which he 
regarded as showing intermediates, he viewed the series as indi¬ 
cating “simply a matter of depth of coloration." Accordingly, 
he established three sub-species for Australia, with the palpe- 
brosa of Wallace (Aru Islands) taking precedence by priority 
over Gould’s personata. The fact was, of course, that Mathews 
had mistaken a lighter-throated palpebrosa ( personata ) for the 
true flavida , which latter bird he had never seen at all. It was a 
curious and an unusual error, made possible only by the fact that 
the birds figured came from near Cairns, not far north of the 
type locality of flavida. 
THE LATEST FIND. 
In a paper on the birds of Central Queensland, read before the 
Royal Society of that State in 1888, Kendal Broadbent recorded 
