of grallatores the most remarkable is the emu.
Very few individuals can now exist in the island, and it is to be feared
that its total extinction will be effected ere it can be ascertained
whether the Tasmanian bird is identical with that of New Holland. Tame
emus are common in the colony, but the original stock of most of those
now domesticated was introduced from Port Phillip.

The fifty-nine species of swimming birds include many sea birds which
inhabit the Antarctic, Southern Indian, and South Pacific Oceans. That
"_rara avis_," the black swan, once so common that rivers, bays, points,
&c., received their names, but a few years ago, from its abundance, is
now becoming truly a _rara avis_ in the settled parts of the island,
having been driven from its old haunts by that great intruder, the white
man. Ducks are numerous, of many species, and form admirable articles of
food. The sooty petrel (_Puffinus brevicaudus_, Brandt.), or mutton
bird, occurs in immense flocks in Bass' Strait. Captain Flinders, in his
_Voyage to Terra Australis_,[271] says that when near the north-west
extremity of Van Diemen's Land he saw a stream of sooty petrels from
fifty to eighty yards in depth, and of three hundred yards or more in
breadth. The birds were not scattered, but flying as compactly as a free
movement of their wings seemed to allow; and during a full _hour and
a-half_ this stream of petrels continued to pass without interruption,
at a rate little inferior to the swiftness of the pigeon. On the lowest
computation he thought the number could not have been less than a
hundred millions. This bird burrows in the ground, forming what are
called by the sealers in the Straits, _rookeries_; and a considerable
trade was at one time carried on in their feathers, eggs, and salted
bodies.[272]

With the exception of the pretty but gaudy parrot tribe, our most
beautiful birds may be said to be the wren (_Malurus longicaudus_,
Gould), the grosbeak (_Estrelda bella_, Lath.), the king-fisher
(_Alcyone Diemenensis_, Gould), the diamond birds (_Pardalotus_
species), and the satin fly-catcher (_Myiagra nitida_, Gould). None of
the birds equal the songsters of Europe, although many have sweet notes,
and some are musical, as the magpie (_Gymnorhina organicum_, Gould),
that lively bird whose cheerful notes delight the ear of every traveller
at early dawn in the settled districts of Tasmania, to which it is
restricted.

The distribution of the birds