Page:The Emu volume 2.djvu/232

 Type in Western Australian Museum, Perth.

The bird above described was shot by me at Lake Yanchep, 35 miles north of Perth, during the last Christmas holidays. Whilst writing these notes I have before me skins of the Lake Yanchep bird, and of M. gramineus, from Victoria and from Mandurah estuary, which is situate some 40 miles south from Perth. Little difference exists between the Victorian and Mandurah skins. On the other hand, the difference between those skins and the Lake Yanchep skins is most marked. The latter is very much smaller, and in addition lacks the oily fulvous colour of the upper surface, sides, flanks, and tail coverts of the former, and in lieu of it has a dullish lustreless smoky-brown. Another point of difference is that the Lake Yanchep bird is striated from chin to abdomen as boldly as a Calamanthus. I shot four birds, and not any one of them exhibited any appreciable difference from the others. The estuary where the Mandurah bird was obtained is salt, and possesses extensive mud-flats covered with samphire. The water of Lake Yanchep is fresh, and heavily charged with carbonate of lime, the formation surrounding the lake being limestone. Is it not possible that the presence of the rich fulvous colour of the estuary bird is due to the mud-flats, and the absence of it in the Yanchep bird to the harsh and harder limestone water?

The notes of the new bird are two melancholy ones, resembling in sound the syllables "tee tee." In the protected area of the Swan River, at Perth, the local bird has three notes, "titty tee tee." The birds were numerous, but difficult to flush, owing to their secretive habits.

I assign to the new species the scientific name of Megalrus striatus, and the vernacular name of the Striated Grass-Bird.

(Large-billed Tit), n. sp.

Upper surface olive-brown; forehead cinnamon-brown, each feather having a crescent-shaped mark of a brighter colour at the extremity, and tipped with dark brown; upper tail coverts reddish or rufous-brown; tail marked with a band of dark brown near the extremity; cheeks, throat, and chest whitish, each feather centred and edged with dark brown or black; rest of the under surface light olive-brown, darker on the flanks and under tail coverts; bill dark brown; feet brownish or fuscous. Length, 4.25; culmen, .45; wing, 2.0; tail, 1.6; tarsus, .7.

Acanthiza magnirostris has more of the black and white mottled under surface than A. diemenensis, and thus more