1 66 FOREIGN FINCHES IN CAPTIVITY. 



"I have had hundreds upon hundreds of these birds through my 

 hands, in all stages of their growth, and in the whole course of my 

 experience I have never known a change of colour to take place in 

 the face, either from black to red, or vice versa. * My experience has 

 taught me that these birds assume either the red face or the black 

 face at the first moult, and, I believe, I can tell with certainty, when 

 the birds are not more than between two and three months old, 

 whether they are going to turn out Black-heads or Red-heads. I have 

 painted specimens in various stages of plumage, which I would be 

 glad to show you." 



Mr. Abrahams believes, however, that the two forms are varieties 

 of one species ; and Mrs. Fraser, an ardent naturalist, informed me that 

 the Gouldian Finch is abundantly bred in aviaries by the Queenslanders, 

 and that in Sydney she saw Red, Yellow and Black-headed Gouldians, 

 all the produce of the same parents. It would thus seem that we 

 have, in this case, to deal with a trimorphic species ; and, that the 

 difference of colouring in the head, is actually of no more specific 

 importance than it is in members of one human family ; but, of this 

 matter, I will speak again presently. 



Two cocks of the Red-faced variety, and a pair of the Black-faced 

 form, were given to me early in 1891, by the Hon. Walter de Rothschild. 

 Curiously enough I had purchased a pair of the form P. gouldice. only 

 a day or two previously ; so that I commenced with four cocks and 

 two hens ; the four first mentioned I turned into my Ornamental- 

 Finch aviary, indoors, and the other pair into my coolest aviary, 

 later in the year (August), in the bird-room, all three cocks incessantly 

 persecuted the one hen, and she (instead of selecting as a husband a 

 Black-faced bird like herself) paired up with a typical P. mirabilis. 

 This bird built a nest for her, in a box with two entrance holes, 

 constructed out of a fig-drum; but, unhappily, through failure to eat 

 shell-making material, she produced unshelled eggs, the second of 

 which killed her. I thus recorded the first of a series of failures, 

 which, unhappily, have been shared by most of those who have 

 attempted to breed this lovely bird. 



My second pair of Black- faced birds (or strictly speaking my first 

 acquired pair), began to build in a hollow oak stump soon after they 

 were turned out, and completed a very nice little nest ; but the result 

 was the same as before, the hen died with a soft egg. A third hen 

 given to me by Mr. Rothschild, to replace the loss of the first, 



* By this remark, Mr. Abrahams intended that he had never known a permanent change to 

 take place ; indeed his next sentence partly explains this. A.G.B. 



