Page:The Emu volume 3.djvu/261

 after Bishop Salvado, the founder of the Mission), and the other the Y Y plain. At the base of the Hills a depressed tract of moist saline country was found, in which salt or brackish lakes formed, one of them, Lake Hinds, being several thousand acres in extent.

The Hills themselves form a very conspicuous object in the surrounding country, are about 1,200 feet above sea level, and about 8 miles in length. They are flat-topped, and composed of ferruginous conglomerate, which overlies country rock. They are seared with gullies and marked with abrupt, bold escarpments, bluffs, and declivities. A remarkable feature in their vegetation is the gimlet gum thickets, which much resemble the "Whipstick" (a species of mallee) scrub near Bendigo, Victoria. Frequently whole belts of these gums were found prostrate, caused by "white ants."

.—The results of the expedition were most gratifying from every point of view. We collected 130 skins for the Western Australian Museum, included in which were those of such uncommon forms as Drymaœdus pallidas (?), Hylacola cauta, Calamanthus montanellus, Malurus pulcherrimus, Malurus leucopterus, Cinclosoma castanonotum, Sericornis brunnea, Misocalius palliolatus, Glycyphila albifrons, Cladorhynchus leucocephalus, Petrœca goodenovi, and a new Ptilotis, hereafter described. Added to this we had the opportunity of making close observation of the habits of many of these species and their young. We also secured many nests and eggs, particularly those of Micrœca assimilis, Glycyphila albifrons, Glycyphila ocularis, and Petrœca goodenovi.

Our great disappointment was to find that the Gnous (Lipoa ocellata) and the Black-throated Coachwhip-Birds (Psophodes nigrogularis) had abandoned the locality. Even up to recent times, the former must have been numerous everywhere in the Hills for we met with hundreds of their old nest-mounds. These had been constructed not only in the rich red alluvial soils at the bases of the Hills, but also in the pocket-gullies on the hillsides, and even on the rocky brows of the hills in the broken conglomerate and gravel. Sites of the last-mentioned description, it is conceived, would not have been chosen by the birds if more suitable ones had been available. One is prompted to ask, "Why have the birds deserted the locality?" I conjectured at the time that it was owing to the pastoral lessees "firing" the scrubs from time to time in the summer season so as to obtain a growth of sweet "feed" for stock after the first autumn rains—a practice much in vogue in Western Australia. On stating my theory to an old resident of Mogumber, who had been a frequent visitor to the Hills in search of minerals, he disagreed with it, and expressed the opinion that the desertion was due to the severe drought which afflicted the country some