1881.] MR. p. L. SCLATER ON THE GENUS CHRYSOTIS. 627 



the Society a specimen of the Kea {Nestor notabilis), or Mountain 

 Parrot, a bird celebrated (or, rather, notorious) for its sheep-destroy- 

 iug proclivities. 



" Many abler pens than mine have already written about their 

 habits; but I veas fortunate enough to be, perhaps, the first to send 

 home a specimen of their work in the shape of the colon and lum- 

 bar vertebrae of a sheep, in which colotomy had been performed by one 

 of these birds. 



"This specimen was shown at a meeting of the Pathological Society 

 by ray friend and former master Mr. John Wood, F.R.S., and is now 

 in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 



"The bird which I am now sending home has been in my possession 

 for nearly two years. It was caught in the act of attacking some 

 sheep which a shepherd was bringing down off the tops of some 

 ranges in the back country. He luckily succeeded in knocking it 

 over with a stone, cut its wings, and brought his captive down. In 

 effecting the capture the shepherd suffered considerable loss as to 

 his trousers and other garments, and received many scratches from 

 its formidable beak and claws. These same scratches had not en- 

 tirely healed when he came down here under my care some ten days 

 later, suffering from a broken leg (this, by the way, was not done by 

 the Kea). 



" "While I have had the Kea, his diet has consisted mainly of mut- 

 ton, raw ; he does not care for cooked meat, but will take it if very 

 hungry. Occasionally he will take beef; and he is fond of pork. 

 Popularly he is said to prefer fat ; but in confinement he chooses the 

 lean and leaves the fat. He does not care for biscuit ; but he likes the 

 seed of the sow-thistle." 



Mr. Sclater laid on the table a skin of one of the examples of the 

 Parrot, of the genus Chrysotis, of which the Society had of late years 

 received several examples from the island of St. Lucia, and which 

 he had hitherto called Chrysotis bouqueti ^ ; and explained the reasons 

 which had induced him to the conclusion that he had wrongly de- 

 termined the species, which was really O. versicolor (Midler)-, while 

 the species from Dominica recently named by Mr. Lawrence C. ni- 

 chollsi^ was, in his opinion, the true C. bouqueti. 



Mr. Sclater remarked that the exact habitats of all the four species of 

 Chrysotis of the Lesser Antilles were now known to us, and were as 

 follows : — 



1. G. augusta, Dominica. 



2. C. bouqueti, Dominica. 



3. C. versicolor, St. Lucia. 



4. C. guildingi, ^t.Yiacewt. 



It was singular that no species of Chrysotis had yet been dis- 



1 P. Z. S. 1874, p. 323, 1875, p. 61, t. xx. et p. 316 ; et List of An. 1877, p. 263, 

 et 1879, p. 295. 



■■' C. cyaiiopis, Finsch, Papag. ii. p. 323. 

 » Pr. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1880, p. 254. 



