178 CONTBIBUTIONS TO THE OKNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



Mr. Davison fail to secure or even see it, but so also did Captain 

 Wimberley, who collected there for us from June to September. 



151 bis.— Palseornis caniceps, Blyth. (25.) 



This fine, large, but rather dingy-looking paroquet occurs, so 

 far as we were able to ascertain, only on the Great Nicobars, 

 Montschall, and Kondul. 



The fully adult bird has not yet, I think, been very correctly 

 described or figured. There is only the merest trace of blue at 

 the very base of the central tail feathers, and the terminal two- 

 thirds of these are brownish grey, and not green ; there is not 

 the faintest trace of any blue shade on the head of the male such 

 as Gould figures, and the cheeks in that sex are quite the same 

 as in the female. The following are dimensions recorded in the 

 flesh of adults of both sexes : — 



Males. — Length, 23 to 26 ; expanse, 25'5 to 26; wing, 8*25 

 to 875 ; tail, 14'5 to 16'25 ; tarsus, 0*75 ; bill, from nostril to 

 point, 1*15 to 1*19 ; from gape, 11 to 1'15 ; weight, 8 ozs. 



Females. — Length, 19'5 to 23*5 ; expanse, 24*25 to 26 ; wing, 

 8 to 8-25; tail, 10'75 to 13-82; tarsus, 0-72 to 0-75; bill, 

 from nostril to point, 1*13 to 1'17. 



In both sexes the legs and feet are plumbeous green, or 

 plumbeous glanced with green ; the irides orange red ; the 

 lower mandible black ; the upper mandible also black in the 

 female, but in the male vermilion, pale yellowish towards the tip. 



I have already discussed (vide ante, p. 25) Dr. Finsch's assertion 

 (" Die papagaien, p. 84") that " the old females are colored like 

 the males, and like them have a red upper mandible." He relied 

 upon a supposed female obtained by the Novara Expedition. 

 The simple explanation is that the Novara people made a 

 mistake, as we are all liable to do with single specimens. 

 We dissected not one but five and twenty specimens, and 

 we know to a perfect certainty that the upper mandible in 

 the oldest female is always black. 



Dr. Cantor sent a specimen of this species from Penang, but 

 there is no reason to suppose that the bird occurs there wild ; 

 the Malay and Burmese traders, who run backwards and 

 forwards between the Nicobars and JBurmah and the Straits, 

 often take live specimens of these birds and of P. erythrogenys 

 away with them. Indeed, besides the five and twenty or so we 

 shot, we obtained five live caged birds on Kondul. 



The male has the forehead and a broad stripe through the 

 lores to the eye, and an enormously broad, mandibular stripe 

 meeting on the throat, black. The whole of the top and back 



