326 The Mutation of the Gouldian Finch.


Turtle-doves were ordered to be among the animals used as

offerings, what more natural than that they should begin to keep

them domesticated as their other animals : cattle, sheep and

goats ? The Rose-grey Turtle does not now seem to occur in

Egypt, though Riippell gives Arabia, Abyssinia and Egypt, so it

may have formerly extended farther north, and it is not impos¬

sible it may even once have been found in the Peninsular of

Sinai. But the Israelites could have obtained it even if it did

not inhabit the country where they were sojourning. We know

that the Egyptians domesticated many birds and animals ; they

certainly kept homer pigeons, so might have kept doves. Such

a supposition is of course conjectural, but the fact that the Bar¬

bary Dove is found over such a wide area points to a very early


domestication. --


Explanation op Plate.


Fig. 1. Head of Turtur dccaocta xanthocyclus, from the original

sketch of the living bird.


Fig. 2. Head of Turtur decaocta douraca, traced from the Indian

drawing in Hodgson’s MSS. Birds of India, Vol.

V., pi. 82, type of Turtur doiiraca.



THE MUTATION OF THE GOULDIAN FINCH.


Poephila mirabilis.


By A. G. Butler, Ph.D. etc.


I11 my “ Foreign Finches in Captivity” 1st ed. p. 175 I

quote Mr. E. P. Ramsay’s note — “ Mr. Armit found them

breeding. The male bird had, he states, the face carmine red.”

Furthermore I quote Mr. Arthur Thompson’s statement that a

pair of black-faced Gouldians had moulted into red-faced birds

and Mr. Abrahams’ assertion that he had possessed hundreds

upon hundreds of these birds in all stages of their growth, but

had never known a change of colour to take place in the face,

either from black to red, or vice versa. Eater, however, I quote a

conversation which I had with Mr. Abrahams in which he stated

that the young of both varieties are at first grey- and then black¬

headed, but that in P. mirabilis the black is greyer or more rusty

than in P. gouldice.



