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fore, evident that the birds only come to their full plumage

in old age, and that accounts for the fact that in a flock of say

one hundred birds, which we often used to see at Gembrook,

some years ago, there would be only a very few, not half-a-dozen

black ones among them. They die off shortly after the change.”

I cannot help feeling very strongly that the conclusions arrived

at by the Director should be received with great caution. Birds

in captivity do not always moult the same as in the wild state.

Look at the Nonpareil, and even some of our British species !

I remember reading of a Naked-throated Bell-bird, I think in

Germany, which one year, like my specimen already referred to,

moulted from the green to the speckled plumage but, unlike my

bird, never moulted into the pure white of the adult male,

although moulting annually at the proper season. See also my

notes below on the moulting of the Regent-bird. If the

accommodation at the Melbourne Gardens is as unsuitable as at

our own, and the food equally unsuitable (my Satin-birds would

graze growing grass like geese, and lived mainly on growing

vegetable matter, to which I added various fruits), it is quite

conceivable that the development of the plumage into that of the

adult may have been deferred. Again, the Satin-bird has all the

appearance of a long-lived species, not one that would naturally

die off in nine or ten years. That it should don its wedding

plumage only in old age seems contrary to all experience.

A creature that is slow to develop is a slow one to die is the

almost universal law. If the Director’s birds had been in their

wild haunts, they would probably have carried the blue-black

livery of the adult male for many a long year.


[Immediately after having penned the foregoing, I wrote to

our fellow member Mr. Victor Castellan, asking him if he would

kindly let me know what had become of the male Satin Bower-

bird which he had purchased from me on the 13th July, 1898.

This bird had shewn his first black feather on the 20th July,

1896, and completed his dark plumage in the autumn of 1897—

more than three years ago. Mr. Castellan, in a letter dated 6th

March, replies as follows :—“ In reply to your note re Satin

Bower-bird, I am glad to say that the specimen I bought off you

is doing very well, and is very much alive. We find him a most

amusing bird ; the variety of his calls is numberless. He also

has the habit of collecting all the stones he can find in one

corner of his aviary. I have also noticed that when he is in his

outside flight in the summer he tries to stick bits of twigs and

grass into the ground, but has so far never built a bower. His



