PI-ATVCKHCUS. 11.'} 



shot a great nuiiiber of these birds, mostly on cuhivated or partially cleared lands, or around 

 the barns, especially when the settlers were threshing their corn. In company with Mr. E. J. 

 Cairn many specimens were also obtained around Cairns, and on the Bellenden Ker Ranges, 

 in North-eastern Queensland, in iSSS-i)." 



For the purposes of breeding the King Lory resorts to the hollow trunk of a lar-e tree. In 

 Gippsland, Victoria, burnt out trunks were more often resorted to. A nesting-place of a pair 

 [ saw at Childers, on the Strzelecki Ranges, was only about fifty yards from the house. 

 The birds could be seen entering and leaving the top of a huge blackened and burnt out 

 trunk in a cultivation paddock, and fully fifty feet from the ground. A rope was thrown 

 over the only limb on the tree, and fortunately close to the top, and Mr. W. Waddell, who 

 essayed the task of taking the nest, was pulled up. (.)n reaching the top, and looking into the 

 tree trunk, there was nothing to be seen but a dark and gloomy cavity. A lantern was procured 

 from the house, and the nesting-place discovered about thirty feet down, on the debris at the 

 bottom. By means of a rope he descended down the inside of the trunk, and after much trouble 

 finally emerged blackened with the charred wood from head to foot and bringing with him four 

 young and nearly fiedged birds. Nesting-places were subseijuently discovered in similar 

 situations, Init no eggs were taken during my stay there on many occasions. 



The eggs are three to five in number for a sitting, rounded-oval in form, white, e.xcept 

 where nest-stained with the decaying wood on which they are laid, the shell being close-grained, 

 smooth and lustreless. A set of three taken by Mr. George Savidge in the Cangai Scrubs, on 

 the Upper Clarence River, New South Wales, on the 8th November, 1897, measure : —Length 

 (A) i'27 X i-oS inches; (B) 1-28 x 1-12 inches; (C) 1-29 x 1-07 inches. 



Young males resemble the adult females. Immature males have the featliers of the head, 

 hind-neck, throat and chest green, with patches of scarlet feathers here and there, and lia\e the 

 blue transverse band below the hind neck ; the longer upper tail-co\erts are black', and more 

 pronouncedly washed with olive-green. Wing 7-7 inches. 



The breeding season conimences in October and lasts the three following months. Messrs. 

 H. C. Robinson and W. S. Laverock record in "The Ibis"'' that Mr. E. Olive found this species 

 breedmg at Cairns, (Queensland, on the 26th October, 1899; the nesting-place was situated in 

 the hollow of a tree, about twenty feet above the ground, and contained five incubated eggs, 

 so much so that two of them hatched before they could be blown. 



Sub-family PLATYCERCIN^. 

 Platycercus elegans, 



PENNANT'S PARKAKEET. 



Psit/acxs flegiins, Grael., Linn. Syst. Nat., Vol. I., p. .iiy (1788). 



riatycercti^ lininant'ii,, iiowXd, P.ds. Austr., fol. Vol. V., pi. 23 (1848); ''7., Haiidbk. Bds. Austr , 

 Vol. II., p. -t-t (1865). 



PI,Uycerc<'s .hgaiis, Salvad., Cat, Bds. Brit. Mus., Vol. XX., p 0-11 (1891); Sliarpe, Hand-1. 

 Bds., Vol. II., p. ;57 (I'.iOO) ; Salvad., Ibis, 19ii7, p. 311. 



AoCLr M.\LE. — (reneral coluur ahovi' and helon- criiii.snu-rfjl ; '■In'i'ka drt^p blue ; scajialars ami 

 feathers of the back black margined with crimson-red ; (/ui/ls black, dark blue on their outer webs, except 



* Ibis, 1900, p. 644. 

 29 



