ON THE PARROTS OF THE GENUS ECLECTUS. 23 



dem k.-k. zoologischen Museum zu Dresden' (I. c. pp. 11-13). He repeats 

 his former observations, and gives some additional ones, amongst which 

 are some remarks on a living pair of Eclectus in his possession, green and 

 red, the green bird on being introduced to the red at once having become 

 friendly with the latter. A green Eclectus that died soon after it came 

 into his possession was dissected and turned out to be a male. As 

 regards the specimens in the Leyden Museum, Dr. Meyer disposes of 

 them by saying that those collected by S. Miiller have been long in the 

 Museum, and may very probably have had their labels transposed that 

 Bernstein, during the latter part of his residence in the Malay archi- 

 pelago (as he himself learned from one of his hunters, who had also 

 collected for Bernstein, and knew the latter well), suffered severely 

 from illness, and therefore may well have made mistakes in the deter- Ibl8> 

 mination of the sexes of his specimens that Hoedt had no pretensions 

 to any scientific knowledge and that Rosenberg has in other instances 

 made blunders of a similar kind so that their evidence counts for little. 

 Dr. Meyer adds some mathematical calculations showing that the chances 

 are 32,700 to 1 against his having killed six all males of the green 

 Eclectus, and nine all females of the red one in the same island, if they 

 really were distinct species. 



So far Dr. Meyer. Important evidence in corroboration of part of his 

 theory is given by the Italian naturalists who have lately visited New 

 Guinea. Beccari, in his Ornithological Letters to Count Salvador! *, 

 says, " Though it seems strange, it is nevertheless true that the green 

 Eclecti are males of the red ones. I learnt this at Aru from my hunters; 

 and the young have the same differences." Salvadori says again (I. c. 

 pp. 756, 757), speaking of the sexual differences in E. grandis, that there 

 is "no longer any doubt on this subject. D'Albertis has assured me that 

 it is a well-known fact amongst the natives of the Moluccas and New 

 Guinea." In his various papers on Papuan ornithology in the same 

 journal, the green specimens of Eclectus are always determined as males> 

 the red as females. 



Prof. Garrod also tells me that during his prosectorship the only two 

 Eclecti that have died in the Zoological Society's Gardens were one 

 E. polychlorus and one E. grandis, respectively male and female. On the 

 other hand, the Rev. George Brown, C.M.Z.S., who has lately sent over 

 to this country such interesting collections from New Britain and the 

 adjacent islands, says, in a letter to Mr. Sclater, dated Sydney, October 

 22, 1876, " This " (i. e. the green and red Eclecti being specifically iden- 

 tical) " is a gross error. Our attention was directed to this subject ; 

 and I am quite sure they are two different birds. We shot the green 



* Ann. Mus. Civ. Storia Natur. Geneva, vol. vii. p. 701 (1875), and Ibis, 1876, 

 p. 253. 



