1 91 8.] Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 521 



impair its health, should, in the case of this one group, 

 stimulate the assumption of adult plumage at an abnormally 

 early age. Indeed, it is incredible that the same conditions 

 of captivity can cause a cock Stanley Parrakeet to come 

 into full colour a year or two before the natural time 

 and yet keep a hen in semi-immature dress all her life. 

 Mr. Mathews will pardon me if I suggest that it can hardly 

 be an "easy" matter to ascertain by observation of un- 

 marked wild birds, of a rather wandering disposition, the 

 exact period taken by a particular individual to assume 

 adult plumage — when that period is more than 12 months. 

 It would, I know, bother me exceedingly to prove by obser- 

 vation of wild Herring-Gulls that the time they took to lose 

 their immature dress in confinement was abnormal, and 

 longer or shorter than the natural one. 



Although I have examined some dozens of birds, many of 

 them in " importation " plumage, coming from different 

 regions, I have never seen an adult male Platycercus eximius 

 with any but red. feathers round the eye and never an adult 

 female which had not a few tiny greenish ones. The latter, 

 however, would not be likely to be visible in a skin which 

 had not been very carefully prepared. The figure of 

 Neophema venusta interested me as it represented a bird 

 with a decidedly golden head. I have had quite a number 

 of N. venusta of both sexes and never yet saw one with the 

 head of a different shade from the rest of the body ; some 

 of my birds were said to have come from Tasmania. 



It does seem a very great pity that Australian naturalists 

 should have taken no serious steps to preserve some of their 

 beautiful Parrakeets from extinction by breeding them in 

 captivity. Once the numbers of a certain species have 

 become so reduced that their annual increase does not equal 

 the toll taken by enemies, natural and otherwise, the fate 

 of that species, in a wild state, is sealed, and strict laws 

 against capture and export alive to other countries are 

 useless, or worse than useless. The average Australian's 

 idea of aviculture, as far as native Parrakeets are concerned. 



