On Birds from British New Guinea, 371 



XXIX. — Diagnoses of Thirty-six new or little-known Birds 

 from British Ntiv Guinea. By C. W. De Vis. 



The birds which 1 propose to describe are from the collections 

 made under tlie leadership of Sir William Macgregor by 

 Mr. A. Giulianetti, during his late journey across British 

 New Guinea, from the Mambare River to the Vanapa River. 

 The passages in the descriptions within inverted commas 

 are transcripts, with here and there slight modifications, 

 of Mr. Giulianetti^s notes on the labels. 



An enumeration of all the species occurring in the general 

 collection is reserved for an appendix to the Annual Report 

 to the Queensland Parliament on British New Guinea for 

 the present year"^. 



Fam. PsiTTAciD^. 



1. Neopsittacus viridiceps, sp. nov. 



Body above, chin, and throat rich dark green, with a very 

 feeble brown tint on the occiput and nape, and with scarcely 

 perceptible paler shaft-streaks ; ear-coverts mostly stained 



* Count Salvador! has kindly sent us the following translation of a 

 letter addressed to him by Sign. Giulianetti concerning this remarkable 

 expedition : — 



"I have just come back from an expedition into the interior of S.E. 

 New Guinea. I passed the mouths of September and October and part 

 of November on Mount Scratchley. At my camp, at 12,200 feet, the 

 birds were very numerous, and many belonged to species which I had 

 never seen near the coast. I obtained, among others, a Woodcock, a 

 Snipe, and two Ducks. There was a Blackbird very common, and also a 

 kind of Aiit/ins. 



" On the Gth of September I killed two specimens of an apparently new 

 Bird of Paradise ; it has the general plumage black and eight of the 

 remiges yellow. Round the eyes there is a naked caruncle as large as a 

 twopenny-piece, of an orange-yellow colour. The bill is similar to that of 

 Astrarchid, lout narrower and more pointed. [Evidently the new Bird of 

 Paradise described by Mr. De Vis as Macyrecjoria pulchra. Ibis, 1897, 

 p. 251, pi. vii.] I found also a Parutia, with the frontal star not white, 

 but coloured like the rest of the feathers of the body ; only a few small 

 feathers over the nostrils are yellow. [See Parotia hvlenee, below, p. 390.] 

 I obtained also specimens of the genera Epimachus, Astrarchia, Diphyl- 

 lodes, and of a Paradisea allied to P. rmjf/kuut, but different, being smaller 



