The Lore of the Lyrebird

By Ambrose Pratt

Lyrebirds are native to Australia and were only scientifically documented in the late 18th Century and are still the subject of exhaustive study to this day. Their amazing calls and exceptional skills of mimicry have led them to becoming the subject of many tall tales, this is a well written guide to the real Lyrebird by a man who has been into the wild outback to find them. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447480846

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE advent of the First Fleet under Captain Phillip at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788, meant not only the acquisition of a continent, but also the responsibility, on behalf of the rest of the world, of the protection of primitive aboriginal peoples and of a unique fauna and flora. To modern man was suddenly presented the opportunity of studying at close hand the life of the distant past. In Australia, alone of the whole world, exist those simple types of animals a study of which is absolutely essential for a correct understanding of the complexities of the human body. Our fauna represents the survival results of functional struggles which have extended over vast periods of time. Each member constitutes a historical document, which, rightly studied, may be compared to the plan of a battlefield. On the date of landing began the investigation of our primitive fauna from the point of view of its importance to health and disease. The senior surgeon of the First Fleet was Dr. John White, who became Surgeon-General of the Settlement, and founded at Sydney Cove the first Australian Hospital, in which, in his own words, more pitiable objects were perhaps never seen. White was a friend of John Hunter, and so had a lively interest in comparative anatomy, for Hunter was the father of modern surgery and the founder of the Museums of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Specimens forwarded to London by White were anatomically examined by Hunter. John Hunter unfortunately died in 1793, a few years before the introduction to science of the two most primitive mammals known—the platypus and the echidna.

A scientific study of the Australian monotremes and the marsupials is absorbingly interesting besides being most illuminating to comparative anatomists in their work on the human body. To study disease of an organ we must first try to know its function, and it is in these primitive Australian types that we can truly know the function of structures; for they have lived in the same environment, on the same food, and in the same manner for untold ages—free from all the modern diseases to which man has become a victim.

Realising the value, medically, of these key-animals, the Commonwealth Government has established the Australian Institute of Anatomy in Canberra. This building, besides being a centre for research into problems of health and disease, contains Museums for the preservation of specimens of our fast-disappearing fauna which will be available to future generations of scientists. The Institute holds the same relation to the National Government of Australia as the Smithsonian Institution at Washington does to the Government of the United States, and the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London to the British Government.

It is the bounden duty of everyone to record and preserve any observations which will be of interest and of value to future generations of Australians, and Mr. Ambrose Pratt, President of the Royal Zoological Society of Victoria, is to be commended for his valuable work dealing with the Lyrebird. Birds probably represent the most highly specialised class of vertebrates, and exhibit, in particular, a constancy in their mode of generation. The fore-limbs, as wings, have become modified for flight with the loss of the opposable thumb, so characteristic a feature of the highest mammals. A study of the wings is of assistance to problems of adaptability, the mode of disappearance of bodily structures, and the means by which strength of bone is combined with lightness. In the bird the female genital organs are now represented by one ovary and one oviduct instead of two, as in mammals and reptiles. The bird may truly be said, anatomically, to have entered a cul-de-sac. Nevertheless, experiments such as these on the part of Nature throw light on the relative functional value of structures in the human body.

Mr. Ambrose Pratt has presented the world with a charming picture of bird-life in a primeval setting. He has proffered us his scientific observations in a delightful style, and their value is enhanced by the fact that these investigations have been carried out on our Australian avian aristocrat, the Lyrebird; for, according to no less an authority than Gregory Mathews, during a period of sixty years there has been little scientific advancement with regard to the economics of such a very peculiar avian form. It is to be hoped that the advancing tide of civilisation will not be too ruthless for these wonder birds.

COLIN MACKENZIE.

Canberra.

CHAPTER ONE

A MIRACLE OF THE DANDENONGS

ONE of the most beautiful and rare and probably the most intelligent of all the world’s wild creatures is that incomparable artist, the Lyrebird (Menura novœ-hollandiœ). This bird exclusively belongs to Australia and inhabits only a single narrow tract of our great continent. It makes its home in the densely timbered mountains that fledge the eastern and south-eastern seaboards.

More than sixty per centum of the population of Australia is settled in the States along whose littoral the Lyrebird ranges, but, although thousands of people have heard the Menura singing and calling in the forests, very few, even yet, have been privileged to see a living specimen. The bird is extremely