Parrots of the Genus Eclectus. 279 



Dr. Meyer then goes on to show that Bernstein's determi- 

 nations of the sexes of the specimens he forwarded to the 

 Leyden Museum are probably erroneous, as in his three 

 years' experience he found the sexes about equally numerous, 

 whereas Bernstein's determinations would show great disparity 

 in their relative abundance (in one case six males to one 

 female, in the other twelve females to two males). The ju- 

 venile plumage of Eclectus is unfortunately still unknown ;. 

 but Dr. Meyer concludes that it is probably green, from the 

 fact that twelve out of fourteen of his red specimens still 

 preserve evident traces of green feathers. 



In reply to these arguments Prof. Schlegel^not unnaturally 

 hesitates to accept Dr. Meyer's conclusions, because, of 72 spe- 

 cimens of red Eclecti in the Leyden Museum, 20 have been 

 determined by the collectors as males, and the remainder (52) 

 as females, and, on the other hand, of 77 green specimens in 

 the same museum, 56 are marked as males and 21 ns females. 

 Hence, if Dr. Meyer be right, a considerable proportion of 

 these specimens must have been wrongly sexed by the four 

 travellers by whom they were collected, viz. Salomon Miiller, 

 Bernstein, Hoedt, and Von Rosenberg. 



Dr. Meyer returns to the charge in a paper in the ' Mitthei- 

 lungen aus dem k.-k. zoologischen Museum zu Dresden' (/. c. 

 p. 1 1-13) . He repeats his former observations, and gives some 

 additional ones, amongst which are some remarks on a living 

 pair of Eclectus in his possession, green and red, the green bird 

 on being introduced to the red at once having become friendly 

 with the latter. A green Eclectus that died soon after it came 

 into his possession was dissected and turned out to be a male. 

 As regards the specimens in the Leyden Museum, Dr. Meyer 

 disposes of them by saying that those collected by S. Miiller 

 have been long in the Museum, and may very probably have 

 had their labels transposed — that Bernstein, during the latter 

 part of his residence in the Malay archipelago (as he himself 

 learned from one of his hunters, who had also collected for 

 Bernstein, and knew the latter well), suffered severely from 

 illness, and therefore may well have made mistakes in the 

 * Mus. Pays-Eas, Psittacidas, 1874, p. 17. 



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