318 Mr. A. R. Wallace's notes on the 



XXVII. — Notes on the Fruit- Pigeons of the Genus Treron. 

 By Alfred R. Wallace. 



In the 'Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor de Dierkunde/ 1863, p. 73, 

 is a paper by Prof. Schlegel on some species of Treron, in which 

 he declares that " most naturalists are ignorant of the laws which 

 rule the coloration of the plumage in these birds," and " that even 

 in the work of Bonaparte one finds co7istantly repeated the venj 

 common error, that the females have constantly a different plumage 

 from that of the males.'' And further on he states that, in all 

 the species allied to Treron aromatica and T. vernans, "as a 

 general rule, the perfect plumage of the adult females does not differ 

 from that of the adult males." 



Having myself collected some hundreds of specimens of Treron 

 of almost all the species inhabiting the Malay Archipelago, and 

 having found, by personal dissection of the specimens, that in 

 almost all the species the sexes differ greatly, I was of course 

 very much surprised at the above statements. On looking over 

 my specimens, however, I see no reason to alter my opinion. Of 

 Treron capellei, Bp., T. aromatica, Gm., T. nipalensis, Bl., T. 

 griseicauda, Gr., T. pulverulenta, MVaW., T.fulvicollis, Wag., T. 

 olax, Temm., and T. vernans, Gm., I have adult females strikingly 

 different in coloration from the males. I believe any ornithologist 

 by a mere examination of the specimens would be satisfied that 

 such is the case ; but I have the further evidence of having iu 

 many cases found large masses of ova in these female birds, and 

 also in the fact that they were in many cases shot from the same 

 flock with the males, that they occurred in nearly equal quan- 

 tities, and that in a large series of female specimens the cha- 

 racters are as uniform and constant as in the males, which cer- 

 tainly would not be the case were they immature birds, or in 

 the act of changing their plumage. I am therefore forced to 

 the conclusion that, the Malayan Collections in the Leyden 

 Museum having been generally formed through the agency of 

 native bird-skinners (most of whom I have myself employed as 

 hunters), the sexes of the specimens have not been accurately 

 determined. 



I will now make a few observations on the species mentioned 



