237 Victoria Lyre-Bird, Pheasant (e), Menura victoriae, V.
Stat. r. dense scrubs, m., 36; f., 27
Beautiful lyre tail; f., sooty-brown; all tail feathers fully webbed. Insects, centipedes, snails.
Order XXI.—Perching-Birds—contains 11,500 species, more than three-fifths of the world's 19,000 birds. As Perching-Birds (Passeres) are still undergoing evolution, connecting links still live, so that it is very difficult to divide the Perching Birds into well-defined families. Sharpe has divided them into sixty-one families, but, for several of these, no exact characters that exclude other birds can be assigned, so that some of these, at least, are "not worthy of family rank." However, Sharpe's classification represents the latest thought of scientists on this difficult matter, so it must be adopted here.
This large order of birds is divided into two sub-orders:—
1. Songless Perching-Birds, made up mainly of South American birds, though two families are included that are represented in the Australian region—viz., Pittas (Pittidae) and New Zealand Wrens (Xenicidae).
2. Song-Birds.
Birds of the second division are again divided into two:—A.: Abnormal Song-Birds. B.: Normal Song-Birds.
The first group, Abnormal Song-Birds, comprises only the two remarkable Scrub-Birds (Atrichornithidae) of Australia. One of these inhabits West Australian scrubs only, while the other inhabits East Australian (Richmond River) scrubs only.