12 Mr. W. R. Ogilvie-Grant on Btrcls 



q,r. ? . Parimau, Mimika River, 6th & 7th Sept. 1910. 

 [Nos. 147, 154, C. H. B. G.} 



s. S irani. Tuaba River, 19th May, 1910. [No. 1160, 

 G. C. S.] 



t-d' . ? et c^ imm. Launch Camp, Setakwa River, 4th 

 Oct.-7th Nov. 1912. [C. B.K.'] 



e'-n'. (J et c? imm. Canoe Camp, Setakwa River, 29th 

 Oct. 1912-5th Jan. 1913. [C.B.K.] 



Adult male. Iris cerise ; bare skin beliind the eyes bronze- 

 black ; bill ivory-black, gape green ; feet fleshy-yellow. 



Immature male. Iris rich blood-orange, pale yellow, or 

 pale greenish-yellow ; bill ivory black, gape green ; feet 

 pale pink, pink, or pinkish-yellow. 



Adult female. Iris blood-orange; bill black, gape greenit^h; 

 feet reddish-flesh-colour. 



Dr. van Oort and Messrs. Rothschild and Hartert have 

 revived the name Paradisea ignota for this Twelve-wire Bird- 

 of-Paradise, but I entirely agree with Sharpe, that Forster 

 did not use the name in a binomial sense. 



The proper name for this species is therefore Paradisea 

 nigricans Shaw ; not the P. nigra Shaw, which is evidently 

 a species o{ Faleinellus, probably F. striatns, but the specimen 

 is not among the birds of the Pennant Collection, recently 

 presented to the British Museum by Lord Denbigh. 



Among the large series collected all stages of plumage are 

 represented, from the young bird with a bill of 1*8 inches to 

 the adult. Perhaps the most interesting are the males in 

 nearly fully adult plumage, but with the quills of the wings 

 and tail rufous more or less suffused with black or black and 

 rufous, the inner web being often black while the outer is 

 rufous or partially rufous. These specimens, a', 6', m' , and 

 n', from the Setakwa River, and No. 221 from the Mimika 

 River, seem to afford a strong argument in favour of a 

 change in the colour of the plumage without a moult. 

 The feathers in question are, however, perhaps the first to 

 be acquired at the beginning of the moult when the change 

 is imminent and foreshadow coming events. 



"The Twelve-wired Bird-of-Paradise was only observed 



