13G ON THE GENUS CITTURA. 



that, in digging;, " the bird appears from choice to use the upper mandihle 

 only ;" and " the upper mandible is fixed fast to the skull, whereas the 

 ■weaker under" one is " attached to the skull only by joints and sinews." 

 The whole is too long to give in full. 



Dr. Meyer remarks : — 



" I observe in my field-notes from Celebes the following remarks on 

 Cittura cyanotis : — 



" ' Mr. Wallace says that this species is a rare one ; but I did not find 

 it so, and could procure as many as I liked. 



"'Male and female are differently coloured, and easily to be distin- 

 guished by the colours of the wing-coverts : they are fine blue in the male, 

 black or black with a hght bluish tinge in the female. The colour of the 

 eves is rosy red. Bill and feet dark red ; claws brownish black. I found 

 in the stomach insects, beetles, Crustacea, worms, &c. 



" ' The bird mostly sits, apparently dreaming and nearly always alone, 

 on the branches of trees. Its cry is, five or six times, one after another, 

 kebekeJc. I only got it in the Minahassa, i. e. in the north of Celebes, not 

 more to the south. Cittura sanghirensis is certainly a different species, larger, 

 and coloured otherwise on the neck and breast. In the whole time which I 

 spent in the Minahassa, from December of the year 1870 till July of 1871, I 

 never got a specimen, among the large number of individuals, which had a 

 similar coloration as the Sangi bird. The young, also, were living in my 

 possession, and they already showed the characteristic sexual difference in 

 their colours.' 



" According to these notes, there c-an, in my opinion, be no doubt as to 

 the sexual difference in C. cyanotis ; but nearly all authors w^ho have written 

 about the species either are not aware of this difference, or attribute another 

 sense to it. C. sanghirensis, from the Sangi Islands, offers a similar sexual 



