BIRDS. 57 



phenomena is doubtless to be accounted for by the fact that his personal experience with 

 these finches was apparently limited to their maintenance in an aviary, in company with 

 a variety of other birds. In accordance with the writer's experiences, these finches will 

 only manifest their natural habits and propensities to their fullest bent when, under 

 conditions of untrammelled liberty, and a temperature coincident with that of their 

 native habitat, they are consorted exclusively with individuals of the same species. In 

 addition to making the acquaintance of these Poephilse in their native haunts, in both 

 Queensland and Western Australia, the author is at the time of writing, and has for 

 about a year past been, the happy possessor of half-a-dozen living specimens. One 

 pair of these represents the scarlet, and the other two the black-headed, varieties. 



As attested to in a previous paragraph, considerable doubt still exists among 

 ornithologists as to the possession by these red and black-headed finches of a sound claim 

 for separate specific recognition. When first discovered, the scarlet-headed form was 

 supposed to represent the male, and the black-headed one the female, of the same specific 

 type, and there are those who still hold to the opinion, and who assert that any gradation 

 between the two may be produced. One fact that the two forms are, as has been 

 personally observed, commonly, if not usually, found in the same flock lends much 

 strength to this hypothesis. On the other hand, while the immature individuals of 

 both forms do present what appear to be intermediate links, the author, in common 

 with other observers, has experienced no difficulty in relegating the adult birds to 

 their respective category. This is more especially easy of accomplishment in the case 

 of living examples, and where their respective vocal talents furnishes a ready clue 

 to their sexual identity. Whichever of the two interpretations, however, may be the 

 correct one, these birds constitute a most puzzling evolutionary conundrum. For if 

 they be two separate species or even merely sub-species, how is it that, consorting 

 in the same flocks, and living under precisely parallel conditions and environments, 

 they have come to acquire their very definite colour distinctions ? If gradations 

 between the two were of more or less common occurrence, the circumstance would 

 not be so remarkable, there being other birds notably the Huff, Philomachus pugnaoa of 

 which it is asserted that two male birds are never precisely alike in colour, though, on the 

 other hand, every phase of variation occurs between the most extreme types. 



The evidence concerning the specific distinctness of these Poephilte adduced by 

 the latest authorities, and recorded in Dr. Butler's book, most strongly favours the 

 interpretation that the scarlet and black-headed individuals are variations only of the 



same bird, for which the title of Poephila mirabilis, as first applied to the scarlet- 

 H 



