The sexes are precisely similar in colour and nearly so in size; dissection, in fact, is necessary to distinguish them. Its note is loud, mournful and monotonous. General plumage rich rusty brown, becoming of a dark brown on the wings; wing-coverts margined with rusty brown; ear-coverts crossed by narrow bars of black; sides and back of the neck glossed with bronzy purple; lateral tail-feathers crossed near the tip by a broad band of black, beyond which the brown colour is paler than at the base; bill dark olive-brown, mealy at the base; irides blue, with an outer circle of scarlet; orbits mealy bluish lilac; feet pink-red. The figure is of the natural size. [Illustration: GNATHODON STRIGIROSTRIS: _Jard._ _J. Gould and H.C. Richter del et lith._ _Hullmandel & Walton Imp._ ] GNATHODON STRIGIROSTRIS, _Jard._ Gnathodon. _Gnathodon strigirostris_, Jard. in Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 175. pl. ix. The researches of modern zoologists have not perhaps brought to light a more curious object than the bird here represented, a single specimen of which is in the collection of Sir William Jardine, Bart., to whose kindness and liberality I am indebted for permission to include a drawing of it in the present work. I regret to say that no intelligence whatever could be obtained as to its habits, or the precise locality of which it is a native; it was purchased by Lady Harvey at a sale in Edinburgh, where the other objects sold at the same time were all Australian, and mostly peculiar to the south-eastern coast of that country; hence I have been induced to include a figure of it in the present work for which I feel that no apology is required, as the Plate cannot fail to be viewed with interest by all ornithologists, and will probably induce residents in the country to investigate the history of so remarkable a species. While we know so little as we do respecting it, every ornithologist must form his own opinion as to the place it should occupy in the natural system; and these opinions will doubtless be very various; the contour of the bill, the form and position of the nostrils are different from those of any other species with which we are acquainted, and although pertaining to so much smaller a bird strongly remind one of the celebrated Dodo; the form of the body and wings and the structure of the feathers differ but slightly from those of the _Columbidæ_, to which family it is, in my opinion, most nearly allied; for although at a first glance its strongly hooked upper and deeply notched under mandible would seem to indicate a sanguinary disposition, and that its food consists of animal substances, I am inclined to believe that it is frugivorous or granivorous, and that the remarkably formed bill is expressly adapted to denude palm-nuts or other strongly coated seeds of their hard outer covering; the maxillæ are very wide,