_Ber-rin̈-nin_, Aborigines of New South Wales. Like many other Australian birds, this species has been considered to be identical with another or others described by the older writers. Messrs. Vigors and Horsfield, in their “List of Australian Birds,” published in the fifteenth volume of the Linnean Transactions, state that they “have been led into a more detailed description of this species, in order to point out the differences of its characters from those of our European species _Hir. rustica_, with which it has been generally confounded;” but while they have very clearly pointed out the distinctive characters of the two species, they have, in my opinion, departed from their usual accuracy in considering it to be identical with the bird figured by Sparmann in the “Museum Carlsonianum” under the name of _Hirundo Javanica_, which is there represented with a square tail, and which, if drawn correctly, is not only specifically but generically distinct. I have also compared specimens of the Australian Swallow with the _Hirondelle Orientale_ of M. Temminck’s “Planches Coloriées,” with which species it was likewise considered to be identical by Messrs. Vigors and Horsfield, but from which also I conceive it to be distinct. On the contrary, the Swallow figured in Griffith’s edition of Cuvier’s “Animal Kingdom” is certainly the Australian bird; but as the specific term there given had been previously employed by Sparmann, as mentioned above, the necessity of a new name for the present species has been forced upon me; and that of _neoxena_ has suggested itself as appropriate, from the circumstance of its appearance throughout the whole of the southern portions of Australia being hailed as a welcome indication of the approach of spring, and its arrival there associated with precisely the same ideas as those popularly entertained respecting our own pretty Swallow in Europe. The two species are in fact beautiful representatives of each other, and assimilate not only in their migratory movements, but also most closely in their whole habits, actions and economy. It arrives in Van Diemen’s Land about the middle or end of September, and after rearing at least two broods departs again northwards in March; but it is evident that the migratory movement of the Swallow, and doubtless that of all other birds, is regulated entirely by the temperature and the more or less abundant supply of food necessary for its existence; for I found that in New South Wales, and every country in Australia within the same latitude, it arrived much earlier and departed considerably later than in Van Diemen’s Land; and Mr. Caley, who resided in New South Wales for several years, and whose valuable notes on the birds of that part of the country have been so often quoted, states that “the earliest period of the year that I noticed the appearance of _Swallows_ was on the 12th of July 1803, when I saw two; but I remarked several towards the end of the same month in