Page:The Emu volume 2.djvu/231

 cream-coloured, with a faint tinge of pinkish-buff; quills greyish-brown, with edge of inner web cream-coloured; tail feathers (except uppermost pair) brown, with pronounced black subterminal bar and white tips. Bill and feet dark horn colour. Total length, 5.25 inches; culmen, 0.5; tail, 2; tarsus, 0.9.

Type in the Western Australian Museum, Perth.

The new species differs from fuliginosus principally in that the upper surface is a lustreless dingy brown, instead of the shiny greenish-brown of that species, and that the striations are narrower. The chin, throat, and chest also show more ashy whiteness, and the striations on those parts are bolder and extend farther down the body. The olive-yellow wash of the lower portions of the body in C. fuliginosus is supplanted with a much lighter coloured wash, which inclines to whiteness on the abdomen. There is scarcely any appreciable difference in the external aspect of the sexes.

The new bird was found in the sterile stony tracts on the north or sheltered side of the Stirling Ranges. Its song is a series of musical warbling notes, which it utters either on the ground or in a low bush. It runs along the ground like a mouse, and is very difficult to flush. Apparently it does not leave a body scent, as C. fuliginosus is said to do, as my Quail bitch did not show any disposition to follow it, neither did she show any canine signs of pleasure when the dead bird was placed near her nose. The birds were very numerous in the sterile places indicated, but very difficult to secure.

I assign to it the scientific name of Calamanthus montanellus, and the vernacular one of the Rock Field-Wren.

, n. sp.

General colour above dark brown (not fulvous), broadly streaked with black down the centre of the back and mantle; rump and upper tail coverts inclined to dull fulvous, both streaked with black; forehead very faintly tinged with dull rufous; head streaked with black, but not so as to form longitudinal lines; wing coverts, like the back, centred with black and margined with brown; wings dark brown, with secondaries blackish-brown, some of them margined with white; tail feathers dark brown; lores blackish; faint eyebrow whitish; cheeks and ear coverts dull whitish, slightly mottled with dusky edgings to feathers; cheeks, chin, throat, and chest whitish, distinctly and regularly striated with black and brownish-black centres to feathers, the striations more pronounced and broader on chest; centre of abdomen white; sides of body and of abdomen, flanks, and under tail coverts not fulvescent, but washed with smoky-brown and striated with blackish-brown; shoulders of wing edged white; axillaries and under coverts creamy; quills greyish-brown; bill and tarsi fleshy-brown. Total length, 5.25 inches; culmen, 0.45; tail, 2.25; tarsus, 0.75.