96 ON THE " PERKOQUET MASCARIN " OF BRISSON". 



ibis, 1879 17. ON THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION AND SCIENTIFIC 

 P . 303. NAME OF "LE PERROQUET MASCARIN OF 



BRISSON.* 



DUEING a visit to Paris last autumn in company with Mr. Sclater and 

 Dr. Hartlaub, I had an opportunity of seeing for the first time, in the 

 gallery of the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, one t of the two sole 

 extant specimens of " Le Perroquet mascarin " of Brisson, the " Cora- 

 copsis mascarina" of most authors. This specimen is- not improbably 

 that described by Brisson, and is still in a fair state of preservation, 

 though its wings and tail are rather damaged. On seeing it I was at 

 once struck with several points in which it differed conspicuously from 

 the other species usually placed in the genus Coracopsis; and after my 

 return to England, at my request, Prof. Alphonse Milne-Edwards was 

 kind enough to have life-sized sketches of the head and foot of this 

 specimen made for me, which are here reproduced, all the figures we 

 have of this species being more or less reduced in size. As will be 



Fig. 1. 



Head of Mascarinus dttboisi. 



seen from the drawing (fig. 1), the beak in this species is very large 

 and deep, not so compressed and elongated as in Psitlacus or Coracopsis, 

 but more like in shape that of a large-billed species of Tanygnaihus or 



* Ibis, 1879, pp. 303-307. 



T The other is in the Vienna Museum (cf. Pelzeln, Ibis, 1873, p. 32). 



