go



any reason why judges, as a body and as individuals, should not

judge consistently, and therefore satisfactorily, which they

certainly do not now succeed in doing, the contradictions in the

judging, and the grumbling, going on year after year in a

manner by no means creditable to those responsible for the

management.


Surely it would not be a very difficult matter for the

Palace and other large show authorities to decide, and to print

in their schedules, in what classes well-known doubtful species

should be placed, and thus save many a sneer at their expense,

and inspire a sense of confidence among exhibitors.


My visit to the show this year was very hurried ; and I did

not get through one-third of the classes; but a glance at the

catalogue seems to expose other birds in wrong classes besides

those mentioned by Mr. Bouhote. The Ring Ouzel is one of our

regular Birds of Passage ; and yet at show after show, as I pointed

out last year, it is received and honoured in a non-migratory

class; and the Great Shrike, exhibited in the same class, is, as

a rule, a winter visitor only. A Crossbill was exhibited in class

ioi and another in No. 104, yet neither was rejected.


Dr. Simpson has referred to the Red-sided Tit as a rare

bird. Rast year, in a moment of weakness, I ventured to infer the

same of Mrs. Palmour’s Orange-flanked Parrakeets, Brotogerys

pyrrhopterus, from South America, which (or one of them) she

still persists in calling Trichoglossus pyrrhopterus from the

Sandwich Islands. Yet hardly had the words appeared in print

than I obtained a pair myself; and during the year a few more

pairs arrived. Last spring I thought I really had secured a rare

bird, a specimen of what appeared to be Wallace’s Lory, Eos

wallacei-, but during the summer a few more trickled over; and later

such a number reached this country that they became common.

But I may well add here that at the Zoo one was obtained and

named the Purple-breasted Lory, Eos riciniata. On referring

to the N.H.M. Catalogue, I find reference made to a third, Eos

insular is, the three differing apparently only in the extent of the

purple patch on the crown, occiput, and nape. When the flood

of these birds came over, I found the purple in all stages, on

some connedted with the purple collar, on others not, on others

again with hardly a trace of purple on head or nape. These

specimens were in poor plumage for the most part, and were

probably immature ; but one could hardly help feeling that the

three were probably but one species in reality. Mais a nos moutons:

I have been told that the Red-sided Tits, Partes varius, have not

been seen in this country for twelve years ; but in the late autumn



