22 U.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 2 65 



on the forehead and fore-crown, while the male has this area bright, 

 shining green. This unique pattern is quite different from anything 

 found in the rest of the group, but in a large, overall view it may be 

 looked upon as an intensified but morphologically restricted expres- 

 sion of what may have been a basic but unformulated tendency to 

 produce rufescent coloration in the Chrysococcyx stock. In this species 

 the basal half of the remiges are rufous, a condition not found in any 

 other member of the genus. 



The other color character that shows much irregular variability 

 in the glossy cuckoos is the purplish or coppery-piu-plish tone that 

 appears at times to replace to a greater or lesser extent the greenish 

 color. This occurs as a relatively minor, subspecific character in 

 C. lucidus, in which the Australian race plagosus has the top of the 

 head and back of the neck purplish-bronze, instead of green as in the 

 typical New Zealand birds. The distinction between green and piu-ple 

 becomes very marked, and the colors themselves are greatly brightened 

 and intensified in the two closely related Asiatic species, maculatus, 

 with glittering emerald plumage, and xanthorhynchus, where the 

 purple has been strengthened into a deep violet. 



In this connection, we may recall that many years ago Walden 

 (1874, pp. 137-138) described a male xanthorhynchus molting into the 

 deep amethystine color of the adult plumage. He noted that some of 

 the feathers of this individual "appear to have changed from green 

 to amethystine without having been moulted. Thus the basal part of 

 one of the median rectrices is more or less green, while the remainder 

 is of a mixed amethystine and greenish hue. Its fellow rectrix, a 

 new feather not fully grown, is coming in of a pure amethystine 

 colour. Several of the upper tail coverts are green at their base . . .", 

 Walden concluded that the old feathers could change from green 

 to purple through abrasion or by fading, but this remains to be 

 demonstrated. 



Inasmuch as a number of digressions from the presentation of the 

 relationships of the existing species have been permitted in the above 

 survey, it may be well to recapitulate the whole history of the genus 

 very briefly. It appears that there were three major branchings of 

 evolutionary lineages in the history of the glossy cuckoos, with 

 considerable but less striking speciation in the stock prior to the 

 first, between the first and the second, between the second and the 

 third, and after the third of these major changes. In the original 

 stock, the closest living representative of which is malayanus, rela- 

 tively small morphological divergences resulted in what we know 

 today as lucidus, basalis, and ruJicoUis, and, with a greater degree 

 of superficial change, osculans. Then came the first branching, char- 

 acterized by a trend toward much more brilliant iridescence in the 

 male and toward sexual dimorphism in the adult plumage. The 



