168 
Annual Congress 
r The Emu 
L Jan. 
be termed the world’s richest aviary, I am forbidden to enter 
the great storehouse of bird lore through lack of the elementary 
knowledge which would open the door, and of leisure to acquire 
that knowledge. I have read that there are no less than 1/ 
families of birds that are peculiar to the Australian region, that 
the Australian sub-region has nineteen-twentieths of the birds of 
the region, and “a larger proportion of peculiar birds than any 
other sub-region of any region” in the world, and that no less 
than 40 distinct species and as many as 184 local varieties of 
kinds found elsewhere in Australia have an exclusively Queens¬ 
land range of occurrence. I assure you that it requires self- 
denial not to let oneself go in surroundings of such wealth for 
study. I have, however, turned my natural history interest in 
another direction. Australia has taken hold of me through the 
most unique of her great natural features, and I am endeavour¬ 
ing to associate myself with the work of one of its small living 
organisms — the coral polype — and of one of its big scientific 
organisations — the Great Barrier Reef Committee. 
In connection with this large interest, I should like to see 
attention given to certain birds that, if not entirely cosmopolitan 
are at any rate not peculiar to Australia, but with regard to which 
our Committee, now firmly established with a scientific director, 
probably well known to all of you — Mr. Charles Hedley — may be 
in a position to give special opportunities for study. I refer to 
the species of Petrel, Gannets (3), Terns (3), Noddy, Frigate- 
Bird, and Tropic-Bird that congregate to breed on some of the 
cays and atolls of the Reef between Torres Strait and the Capri¬ 
corn Group, and disperse over the oceans except during the 
breeding season, as well as to those other species associated with 
these that are found on the coast throughout the year. We — I 
am now speaking as a member of the Great Barrier Reef Com¬ 
mittee — want to know all about the Reef, including the action 
and reaction of the various biological agents on each other in 
their work of building it up. The birds, with their capacity for 
making large guano deposits on the islands and with their in¬ 
fluence on the fish life round them, are among these agents. In 
asking for more study of these tropic sea-birds, I do not for a 
moment want to give the impression that this study has been 
neglected in the past. These birds were observed, though un- 
ornithologically, by Banks in the “Endeavour,” and Captain Cook 
gave bird names to some features of our coast (1770). Bynoe, 
surgeon of the “Beagle,” in 1840-41, did work appreciated by 
Gould; and J. B. Jukes, in the “Fly” (1842-43), describes the 
colonies of sea-birds nesting on Eady Elliot Island at one end 
of the reef and at Raine Island near the other. John McGilli- 
vray, also on the “Fly” (1842-43) and afterwards on the 
“Rattlesnake” (1847-48), supplied to Gould accounts of the sea- 
birds on the islands at the northern end of the reef ; and PI. N. 
Moseley, on the “Challenger” (1874), also dealt with the bird 
colonies there. 
