Letters, Extracts, Notices, ^c. 675 
captivity until the night of July 26th, 1902, when, just as it 
was completing its moult, it also died. 
My experience, and that of many other bird-keepers, with 
regard to this species of Po'ephila, is that it is by no means 
gifted with longevity : the greater number of imported 
Gouldian Finches die in the first or second year of captivity. 
For a specimen therefore to retain its health in one of my 
flight-cages for six years seems to me exceptional. 
However, the longevity of my Gouldian Finch was by no 
means the most interesting fact in connexion with it. What 
astonished and interested me most was that from about its 
third year (in my possession) its colouring deepened very 
noticeably with each succeeding moult. Now, at its death, 
it was so dissimilar from the normal P. gouldice that, if 
shot wild, nobody would hesitate to regard it as a very 
distinct species. The following is a description of the final 
colouring : — 
Entire head, throat, and breast glossy blackish indigo or 
blue-black ; a few feathers in the middle of the hind-breast 
with blue fringes ; back of crown slightly olivaceous, grading 
into the deep olive-green of the nape and back. Feathers 
of hinder back with more or less broad grass-green borders ; 
feathers of rump blue-black, fringed with peacock-green or 
blue ; tail blue-black. The wings shew no marked diff'erence 
from the normal type, but the breast is dull ochreous rather 
than bright saffron-yellow, and is disfigured by a vague 
central longitudinal broad olive streak and by similar 
flanking streaks. Between the blue-black breast and the 
abdomen is a line of copper-reddish ; the vent is w^hite. 
Beak white, with tip and commissure claret-coloured ; irides 
blackish ; feet pale bufiish, toes pale pinkish flesh-coloured, 
claws pale bufiish. 
Among Thrushes and Skylarks which have lived long in 
captivity melanochroism is not uncommon. I well remember 
one Song-Thrush, the property of an old Irishman who used 
to keep a bird-shop in Keppel Street, Chelsea, which was 
quite black. Its owner informed me that he had kept the 
bird for sixteen years, and although it had become quite a 
cripple from old age, he had not the heart to kill it. He 
SER. VIII.— VOL. II. 2y 
