DIE PAPAGEIEN. 15 



ing whatever ; the tail feathers bluish, and the bill pale coral, 

 red above, black inside the mouth and at the base of the lower 

 mandible ; the feet, plumbeous grey. 



" The ring round the neck, which is a miniature of that of P. 

 eupatrms does not appear until the bird is two years old. Most 

 writers say the third yeai*, but this is erroneous, as from the 

 hatching in one year to the breeding season of the third, is 

 more nearly two years, and it is then that the ring appears." 



Whilst we are dealing with torquatus, let me notice a curious 

 circumstance. 



Both sexes have the mandibles colored alike, and from all 

 localities the upper mandible is red. The color of the lower 

 mandible however would seem to vary somewhat according to 

 locality. In birds from Ceylon and the extreme south of India, 

 as from Anjango, it is black. Birds from the N. W. Panjab, 

 Sindh, and Kajpootana, have the lower mandible more or less 

 mingled with red ; some few specimens have the lower mandible 

 nearly wholly black, but most of them, have more or less of the 

 basal portion red. Birdg from further North and East, Etawah, 

 Kangra, the Dhoon, Kumaon, commonly have the lower man- 

 dibles red, more or less blotched with dusky, though here also 

 occasionally, it may be met with black, while birds from Sikhim, 

 Dacca, Calcutta, Thayetmyo, have the lower mandible, so far 

 as my experience goes, almost entirely red. 



The above holds good in the forty odd specimens in my 

 museum, but does it do so always ? I have not sufficiently 

 attended to this point hitherto, but I hope other observers will. 



Of eques, Bodd., I say nothing, Mr. Newton can probably tell 

 us whether the bird, which I gather that he sexed as a female, 

 and which our author puts down as a young male, was really so, 

 and whether the adult females in this species ever acquires the 

 neck ring. 



We next have cyanocephalus, Linn. Here, according to my 

 views, Dr. Finsch has combined two distinct species. In the 

 one, which I will call purpureus, Mull (Dr. Finsch will set me 

 right, doubtless, about the synonymy), which is from Ceylon, 

 Southern, Central, the whole of Northern and Western India 

 and the Himalayas, as far East at any rate as the Dhoon, the 

 adult males have a brighter and more crimson wing spot, 

 than in the other, the under wing coverts and axillaries are 

 glaucous or verditer blue, the head peach-bloom, or more correct- 

 ly, a beautiful red, shaded with blue on the occiput, nape, 

 and more faintly so on the cheeks, and black mandibular stripes 

 continued as a collar round the back of the neck. The adult 

 females want the black mandibular stripe and collar and the red 



