The _Meliphaga Novæ-Hollandiæ_ is one of the most abundant and familiar birds inhabiting the colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land, and South Australia: all the gardens of the settlers are visited by it, and among their shrubs and flowering plants it annually breeds. It is not a migratory species, but occasionally deserts some districts for others whose flowering plants offer it a more tempting _locale_, and furnish it with a more abundant supply of food: the belts of Banksias, growing on sterile, sandy soils, afford it so congenial an asylum, that I am certainly not wrong in stating that they are never deserted by it, or that the one is a certain accompaniment of the other. The range enjoyed by this species appears to be confined to the south-eastern portions of Australia: it is abundant on the sandy districts of South Australia wherever the Banksias abound; but to the westward of this part of the country I have not traced it. At the Swan, and the other parts of the western coast, it certainly is never found. In Van Diemen’s Land it is much more numerous on the northern than on the southern portion of the island; it is also most abundantly dispersed over all the islands in Bass’s Straits, whose sandy, sterile soil favours the growth of the Banksias; it is equally common over every part of the colony of New South Wales, which may, in fact, be regarded as the great stronghold of the species; at the same time I must not fail to observe, that the districts bordering the sea-coast are most favourable to the growth of its favourite tree; hence while it is there most numerous, in the interior of the country it is seldom to be seen. It evinces a more decided preference for shrubs and low trees than for those of a larger growth; consequently it is a species particularly subject to the notice of man while it flits from bush to bush. Nor is it the least attractive of the Australian Fauna; the strikingly-contrasted markings of its plumage, and the beautiful appearance of its golden-edged wings, when passing with its quick, devious and jumping flight from shrub to shrub, rendering it a conspicuous and pleasing object. It has a loud, shrill, liquid, although monotonous note. Its food, which consists of the pollen and juices of flowers, is procured while clinging and creeping among them in every variety of position: it also feeds on fruits and insects.