22 ON THE PARROTS OF THE GENUS ECLECTUS. 



E. westermanni can hardly be man and wife, owing to their disparity in size 

 (the wing of the former being given by Pinsch as 9" 5'", of the latter 7'' 8"' 

 to 8" 5'", and other measurements in proportion). Hence we may conclude 

 that in the former case the male, in the latter the female, remains to be 

 discovered, as well as the exact habitat of each. When we reflect on the 

 little knowledge we still have of the great mass of New Guinea, as well as 

 of some of the neighbouring islands, it is evident that ample area for such 

 a discovery is still left. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that 

 certain other Parrots belonging to the same region, likewise first de- 

 scribed from captive specimens, and undoubtedly distinct (e. g. Lorius 

 *i&iafta,Scl. P.Z.S. 1871, p. 449, and TricJwglossus mitcMli, G. E. Gray), 

 have their exact habitat still unascertained. The recent discovery of 

 Loriinse (a group of which the geographical range coincides remarkably 

 with that of Edectus, as has been pointed out by Mr. Wallace) in such 

 unexpected localities as Ponape (in the Caroline group), where Chalcopsitta 

 rubiginosa occurs*, and Fanning Island, in the mid Pacific t, renders it 

 even possible that an Edectus may turn up in some equally "unlikely" 

 locality J. 



J^j 7 ' Dr. Meyer then goes on to show that Bernstein's determinations of 

 the sexes of the specimens he forwarded to the Leyden Museum are 

 probably erroneous, as in his three years' experience he found the sexes 

 about equally numerous, whereas Bernstein's determinations would show 

 great disparity in their relative abundance (in one case six males to one 

 female, in the other twelve females to two males). The juvenile 

 plumage of Edectus is unfortunately still unknown; but Dr. Meyer 

 concludes that it is probably green, from the fact that twelve out of 

 fourteen of his red specimens still preserve evident traces of green 

 feathers. 



In reply to these arguments Prof. Schlegel not unnaturally hesitates 

 to accept Dr. Meyer's conclusions, because, of 72 specimens of red 

 Eclecti in the Leyden Museum, 20 have been determined by the collectors 

 as males, and the remainder (52) as females, and, on the other hand, of 77 

 green specimens in the same museum, 56 are marked as males and 21 as 

 females. Hence, if Dr. Meyer be right, a considerable proportion of 

 these specimens must have been wrongly sexed by the four travellers by 

 whom they were collected, viz. Salomon Miiller, Bernstein, Hoedt, and 

 Von Rosenberg. 



Dr. Meyer returns to the charge in a paper in the ' Mittheilungen aus 



* Vide Finsch, ' Journal des Museum Godeffroy,' Heft xii. 1876. 

 t Coriphilus Jcuhli, P.Z.S. 1876, p. 421. 



| Prof. Bietmann's "shining-red Parrots" in Guadalcanal- (P.Z.S. 1869, p. 127) 

 might well be E. cornelia. 



Mus. Pays-Bas, Psittacidir, 1874, p. 17. 



