feeling, and give its energies a new direction. After satisfying myself that the gaily-adorned plumage of the male is only assumed during the summer season, I endeavoured to ascertain at what periods these changes take place, and I found that the adult males generally begin to assume their blue dress in March, and to throw it off again for their winter garb in August; but although the greater number undergo their periodical change simultaneously, still individuals may occasionally be met with in their brilliant plumage even in the depth of winter, owing to some peculiar circumstance having caused them to retain it later than usual, or having induced them to assume it at a much earlier period. During the winter months no bird can be more tame and familiar, frequenting the gardens and shrubberies of the settler, and hopping about their houses as if desirous to court, rather than shun, the presence of man; but the male, when adorned with his summer plumage, becomes more shy and retiring, appearing to have an instinctive consciousness of the danger to which his beauty subjects him; nevertheless they will frequently build their little nest and rear their young in the most populous places. Several broods are reared annually in the Botanic Garden at Sydney, and I saw a pair busily employed in constructing their nest in a tree close to the door of the Colonial Secretary’s Office in that town. The short and rounded wing incapacitates it for protracted flight, but the amazing facility with which it is enabled to pass over the surface of the ground fully compensates for this deficiency: this mode of progression is scarcely to be called running, but is rather a succession of bounding hops, performed with great rapidity: while thus employed its tail is carried perpendicularly or thrown forward over the back; in fact, except during flight, this organ is rarely, if ever, carried horizontally. The breeding-season continues from September to January, during which period at least two, if not three, broods are reared: the young of one being scarcely old enough to provide for themselves, before the female again commences laying: independently of rearing her own young, she is also the foster-parent of the Bronze Cuckoo (_Chalcites lucidus_), a single egg of which species is frequently found deposited in her nest; but by what means, is, as in the case of the European Cuckoo, unknown. The nest, which is dome-shaped, with a small hole at the side for an entrance, is generally constructed of grasses, lined with feathers or hair: the site chosen for its erection is usually near the ground, in a secluded bush, tuft of grass, or under the shelter of a bank. The eggs are generally four in number, of a delicate flesh-white, sprinkled with spots and blotches of reddish brown, which are more abundant, and form an irregular zone at the larger extremity: they are eight lines long by five and a half broad.