Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/246

 Of the thirteen kingfishers of Australia, the most remarkable is that well known by the singular name laughing jackass, from its singular and indescribable note, and settlers' clock, from its announcing, after a fashion of its own, the break and close of day. We never met with a bird so remarkably tenacious of life as this. On one occasion, while desirous of killing a wounded individual, we were annoyed to find that it sustained the weight of a bag of shot, weighing 28 lbs., placed on its chest for a quarter of an hour, without causing the speedy and humane death we anticipated. Perhaps the most gorgeous kingfisher in the world (not even excepting that to which the specific name dea or the "goddess" has been applied) is a long-tailed one peculiar to Cape York, where it lights up the dark recess of the bushes during its arrowy flight as its bright colours catch the eye for a moment ere it is lost to view. According to the natives, it makes its nest in the enormous ant-hills of red clay, sometimes as much as fifteen feet in height, with pinnacles and buttresses, like the rude germ of Gothic architecture, and which form conspicuous objects even to those sailing along the coast in that neighbourhood.

Perhaps the most peculiarly characteristic bird of Australia is the menura, the lyre bird, or pheasant of the colonists. And if the singularity of its tail, reminding one of the representations of the musical instrument whence its name has been derived, immediately attracts the eye, the habits of the bird are found by those acquainted with them to be no leas curious. The menura imitates the note of almost every other bird in the bush, and resorts periodically to favourite well-beaten "corroborying places," where it practises certain extraordinary antics. A second kind of lyre-bird (M. Alberti) seems to be peculiar to the neighbourhood of the Richmond River. Its most prominent distinctive feature consists in the remarkable outer tail feathers curving inwards towards the tip, instead of outwards as in the common kind, which, we may add, is still to be found in some of the gulleys connected with Middle Harbour, within four or five miles of Sydney.

Of the twenty finches of Australia, one well merits the name