I have specimens collected in every one of the Australian colonies, even that of Port Essington; I encountered it myself on the flat and fertile districts of the Upper Hunter in New South Wales, and James Macarthur, Esq., informed me that it is sometimes seen on his estate at Camden; at the same time, as it is rarely met with on the seaside of the mountain ranges, but occurs in considerable numbers on the plains of the interior, so far as they have yet been explored, it must be regarded as an inhabitant of the central portion of the country, over the whole of which vast space it is doubtless numerously dispersed. Its natural food being the seeds of grasses and leguminous plants, it is observed more frequently on the ground than among the trees; I sometimes met with it in small flocks, but more often in pairs or singly. It runs over the ground with a short bobbing motion of the tail, and while feeding is so remarkably tame as almost to admit of its being taken by the hand, and if forced to take wing it merely flies to the nearest trees, and there remains motionless among the branches until it again descends to the ground. I not unfrequently observed it close to the open doors of the huts of the stock-keepers of the interior, who, from its being so constantly before them, regard it with little interest. The nest is a frail but beautiful structure, formed of the stalks of a few flowering grasses, crossed and interwoven after the manner of the other pigeons. One sent me from Western Australia is “composed,” says Mr. Gilbert, “of a small species of knotted everlasting-like plant (_Composita_), and was placed on the overhanging grasses of the _Xanthorrhœa_; but the bird usually constructs a very loosely formed nest in the fork of a tree. During my first visit to this part of the country only two situations were known as places of resort for this species, and I did not meet with more than five or six examples; since that period it has become extremely abundant, and now a pair or two may occasionally be seen about most of the settlers’ houses on the Avon, becoming apparently very tame and familiarized to man. It utters a rather singular note, which at times very much resembles the distant crowing of a cock. The term is _Men-na-brun-ka_ is applied to it by the natives from a traditionary idea that the bird originally introduced the _Men-na_, a kind of gum which exudes from a species of _Acacia_, and which is one of the favourite articles of food of the natives.” The eggs are white and two in number, eleven-sixteenths of an inch long by seven-sixteenths broad. The sexes, although bearing a general resemblance to each other, may be readily distinguished by the smaller size of the female, by the browner hue of her wing-feathers, and by the spotting of her upper surface not being so numerous or so regular as in the male.