488 NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr. North, by permission of the Curator of the Australian 

 Museum, exhibited an example of the now extinct Phillip Island 

 Parrot, Nestor productus Gould, its then restricted habitat being 

 about five miles away from Norfolk Island. The specimen forms 

 part of the "Old Collection," and nothing is known of its history 

 beyond that recorded in the Register for 1875, No. 2933, 

 ^^ Nestor productus {ex.tinQt) Phillip Island." It was at that time 

 a mounted specimen in the Exhibit Collection, but has since been 

 reduced to a skin, and placed in a glass-jar. Formerly it was in 

 spirits, which caused the dull yellow and red plumage of the 

 underparts to fade so much as to render the specimen almost a 

 uniform brown. This species is the smallest of the genus Nestor, 

 the wing-measurement of the present specimen being only 9-6 

 inches. For comparison, the skin of an adult male of Nestor 

 meridionalis, its nearest living ally, obtained at Titirangi, ten 

 miles north-west of Auckland, North Island, New Zealand, on 

 the 27th April, 1877, was shown. One of the best life-histories 

 of the Phillip Island Parrot will be found in the folio edition of 

 the "Birds of Australia," written by Gould, who originally de- 

 scribed it, in 1836 (Proc. Zool. Soc. London), under the name of 

 Plyctolophus productus. According to the late Professor A. 

 Newton, M. A., of Cambridge, the last Phillip Island Parrot 

 known to have lived, Gould saw in a cage in London, about the 

 year 1851. The species became extinct about the middle of last 

 century, and not more than a dozen specimens are believed to 

 exist in collections. So far as is known, the present specimen is 

 the only one in Australia. Mr. North also referred to the in- 

 creasing scarcity, and danger of extinction of the Chestnut- 

 shouldered Grass-Parrakeet, Neophema pulcheUa Shaw, restricted 

 in its range to New South Wales and Victoria. In former 

 years, this beautifully plumaged species was comparatively com- 

 mon in the neighbourhood of Sydney, being specially numerous 

 in 1875, about Ashfield, Bankstown, and Rope's Creek. It has 

 now, however, entirely disappeared from the environs of the 

 Metropolis, nor had he heard of its having been found elsewhere; 

 the last specimen received by the Trustees of the Australian 

 Museum, being a young bird procured by the late Mr. J. A. 



