BuLLER. — On Neio Zealand Birds. 65 



fashion as the Kakapo ; " and a scientific correspondent in 

 England, to whom I sent a pair of Hve ones, writes me that it 

 seems "far more like a Conunis than a Platycercus." But, 

 although I have made a careful comparison between the bones 

 of the two species, I cannot find that the sternum of Platycercus 

 unicolor differs in any respect from that of P. novce-zealandice, 

 except as to size. 



Antipodes Island — a mere rock in the ocean, 640 miles 

 from Port Chalmers in a southerly direction — is the only 

 known spot on the face of our globe inhabited by this 

 Parrakeet. One can understand how, under the laws of 

 evolution, isolation for perhaps many centuries has enabled 

 this bird to develope its specific characters of form and colour. 

 But how about Platycercus erytJirotis, living alongside of it in 

 the same island-home, and so slightly differentiated from P. 

 iiovce-zealandm that some ornithologists regard them as one 

 and the same species ? The only explanation I can offer is 

 in a theory of colonisation at a later period of time, but 

 sufficiently remote to account for a certain amount of diverg- 

 ence from the parent stock. The differences consist in an 

 appreciably larger size, with paler irides, and a colder shade 

 of green throughout the plumage, in having the red patch on 

 the vertex much reduced in extent and mixed with the green, 

 the line of red from the bill to the eye narrower, and the 

 extension beyond reduced to a mere point. These are just 

 such changes and modifications as would naturally mark the 

 gradual transition from Platycercus novcB-zealandice to P. 

 unicolor. 



Owing to the uniform colour of the plumage, and the deli- 

 cate shades through which the green passes, being lightest 

 and brightest on the forehead, Platycercus unicolor is, to my 

 mind, the prettiest of the whole group. I remember being 

 struck many years ago with the portrait of the then unique 

 specimen in the British Museum, in an illustrated folio mono- 

 graph of Parrots, as being one of the handsomest plates in the 

 book. 



The species appears to have no note but a low chatter, ex- 

 cept when fighting, wdien this is prolonged into a little scream 

 like the cry of a Tern (Sterna frontalis). 



My captive birds seemed perfectly happy, although caged 

 as adults. They partook freely of maize and oats, also of 

 apples, grapes, figs, and, indeed, ripe fruit of any kind. They 

 could bite severely, as I soon learned to my cost. 



Platycercus erythrotis. (The Auckland Island Parrakeet.) 



Curiously enough, associated with Platycercus unicolor 

 on Antipodes Island, as already stated, is a form more nearly 

 allied to our Red-fronted Parrakeet. This is Platycercus ery- 



