that there is a considerable population living within a couple of miles of some of my best hunting-grounds. From an elevation near Wiluna I could see the gleam of a large body of water about four miles away, and I bent my steps in that direction. It was a good hour's walk over the rough, stony ground, but the country I traversed, after my Lake Austin experiences, seemed quite familiar—the same shallow creeks running down to the lake, with outcrops of quartz or ironstone, and a gradual dying out of shrubs and bushes, which eventually gave way to herbaceous plants of the Salsolaceæ, Hibisci, and the very abundant samphires. The birds were characteristic too—Acanthiza, Xerophila, Cinclosoma, Malurus, Tæniopygia, Oreoica, Glycyphila, Sphenostoma, Epthianura, and a few others common to the surrounding district. I was not long in finding a nest. In a clump of dwarf tea-tree scrub I flushed a Glycyphila from her nest with two eggs. These proved to be eggs of G. albifrons; they afterwards frequently came in my way. This was encouraging, showing that the breeding season had already commenced. I found Lake Violet contained a large volume of water, the largest sheet averaging perhaps a mile in width by a mile and a half in length, with various arms and channels penetrating the surrounding flats or sand-hills. I worked this country with more or less success, and also the scrubs to the west and north-west of Wiluna, until 29th July, when I left for Bore Well and the adjacent spinifex plain, lying about 30 miles to the west of Wiluna, and where, as before mentioned, I had seen the Amytornis and Stipiturus. I put in a fortnight there, but, finding myself too early for nests and eggs of either species, I returned to Wiluna on 15th August, and again worked the neighbourhood of Lake Violet. Having previously found a nice pool of fresh water in a creek, I camped beside it, in what shelter I could find. I remained at this camp until the end of the month, meeting with fair success in the interim. I then returned to the attack at Bore Well, and this time met with better success, as will be shown in the sequel.
On 17th September I was back in Wiluna, preparatory to setting out to a sheet of water known as Milly Pool, some 20 miles or thereabouts to the north-west of the township, and lying on the stock route from Peak Hill and the Gascoyne and Ashburton Rivers. The country here was vastly different from anything I had previously met with on the Murchison goldfield. Eucalypts were abundant and of two or three species—one locally known as the flooded or river gum, the second a York gum, and the third known as blackheart. Some of these trees attained to considerable dimensions, and the majority, alas! were unclimbable without special preparations and assistance. Milly Pool itself was a depression in an extensive plain, somewhat resembling an almost effaced river-bed. The water it
