I 30 Mathews, The Admission of Colour-Genera. [ist'oct. 



Ternate attaining a black chin, and in Tonga we see a most 

 complex change, the throat in the male being all black, the rest 

 of the under parts being yellow, the place of the black pectoral 

 band being yellow ; in the female the throat is white, a rusty- 

 tinged pectoral band being followed by yellow underneath. In 

 P. astrolabei, from the Solomon Islands, the male is practically 

 as in temporalis, but the throat coloration is bright yellow, not 

 white. On another of the Solomon group, a further melanistic 

 change occurs ; the birds called P. melanota have the black of the 

 head extending over the whole of the upper parts, and the pectoral 

 band broadened, and black patches appearing on the sides of the 

 body. In the former the female shows a tendency to evolve into 

 a yellowish underneath bird, which has come about in the latter, 

 which has also evolved in a reddish direction on the head, wings, 

 and pectoral band. On the Fiji Islands there is a form which 

 has lost the black pectoral band while producing a yellow throat, 

 and is now uniform yellow below, and, in addition, has evolved 

 two yellow forehead spots. I would just like to note that another 

 form, called P. fulviventris, while retaining the general colour- 

 pattern, with a white throat, has produced a deep fulvous 

 abdomen, &c., coloration. 



This review may not be so easy to follow as it is when the birds 

 are laid out for examination, but the existence of a definite colour- 

 pattern in this group independent of colour is manifest by the 

 existence side by side of P. temporalis and rufiventris. How the 

 colours change in a complementary manner has been explained 

 in the preceding cases, when we see the yellow predominating, 

 the black predominating, and the fulvous new colour driving out 

 the yellow. We have not the changes in existence as far as is yet 

 known showing the alteration from temporalis to rufiventris. 



It must be obvious now that there is a difference between colora- 

 tion and colour-pattern as laid down by Dr. Lowe in section i. 

 The constancy of persistence of colour-pattern (Dr. Lowe's section 

 3) has been well demonstrated. The correlation of colour-pattern 

 to sex (Dr. Lowe's section 5) must be recognized throughout thp 

 preceding remarks on Pachycephala, and the student will have 

 noted how the colour-pattern is even evolved in the female in 

 the case of P. littayei. The usage of super-genera must await 

 the examination of suites of material, as here, apparently, we have 

 a super-generic group of birds, which includes several generic 

 groups which have not yet been determined. 



An American Opinion Concerning Genera. — The following pas- 

 sage, taken from The Auk (the official publication of the American 

 Ornithologists' LTnion), July, IQ15, shows American thought con- 

 cerning the difficult question of genera : — 



" The question of the limits of genera bids fair to be the most 

 serious problem in zoological nomenclature. In the recent ' List 

 of British Birds ' there are 171 species and 151 generic groups 



