1882. ] MR. P. L, SCLATER ON RUPPELL’S PARRO?. 577 
It approaches the figure of Scrobicularia rostrata of H. Adams 
(Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, pl. xxviii. f. 15), but is larger, is not so 
coarsely sculptured, and is not merely convex, but ventricose. In 
the same rich collection is a somewhat distorted shell marked as the 
Thracia (!!) trigona of the ‘ Samarang’ (pl. 24. fig. 8), and possibly 
a form of our ZL. spectadilis. All three, even if different, are 
Leptomye. Figures of my three species will be found in the Journ. 
Proc. Linn. Soc. Zool. 1882, vol. xvi. pl. 12. 
6. Note on Riippell’s Parrot. By P. L. Scuater, M.A., 
Ph.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Society. 
[Received June 15, 1882.] 
(Plate XLII.) 
In 1848 the late Mr. G. R. Gray described and figured in the 
Society’s ‘Proceedings’? a new species of Parrot from Western 
Africa, from a specimen that had lived for about twelve months in 
the Gardens, and proposed to call it Psittacus rueppelli. Mr. 
Gray quite sufficiently described it as of a‘‘uniform dark bronze- 
colour, with the lesser and underwing-coverts bright yellow; the 
feathers of the thigh orange-yellow.”’ 
In 1852 the late Mr. Strickland and I met with examples of this 
Parrot in the collection formed in Damara-land by Mr. Andersson, of 
which an account was given by us in Jardine’s ‘ Contributions to 
Ornithology’ for that year (p. 156). Finding that some of the 
specimens procured by Mr. Andersson agreed with Mr. Gray’s 
description, while others differed in having the rump and under tail- 
coverts margined with glaucous blue, we not unnaturally concluded 
that the latter (being the more brightly coloured birds) were of the 
male sex, and that Mr. Gray had described and figured a female 
bird *. 
The same view as to the colour of the sexes in this Parrot was 
subsequently adopted by Dr. Hartlaub (Orn. West-Afr. p. 168); 
while Dr. Finsch (Papag. ii. p. 498) and Schlegel (Mus. de P.-B., 
Psittaci, p. 36) described the sexes as alike, and as both having the 
blue colour on the rump and under tail-coverts. But, so far as [ can 
at present make out, the strange fact appears to be that in this 
species the blue on the rump and under tail-coverts is the character- 
istic of the female sex. Such at least is the case in four examples 
of this Parrot (two of each form), which were acquired by the Society 
in April last ®, and which have since died, and have been carefully 
dissected in our Prosector’s Office. In two other examples of this 
1 P.Z.S. 1848, p. 125, Aves, pl. 5. 
2 Mr. Andersson himself, in his ‘Birds of Damara Land’ (p. 215), published 
by Mr. Gurney in 1872, has noted that in some female examples of Paocephalus 
rueppellé the blue colour is certainly present. 
3 Vide supra, p. 421. 
