A NATUBALIST IN CELEBES 



Lord Walden (80) and Blasius (6) — but rather to say a 

 few words about the feathered friends I met on my daily 

 walks, as one [would describe the blackbirds and thrushes, 

 the sparrows and martins, the rooks and magpies of our 

 own country. 



The only parrots on the island belong to the species 

 Tanygnathus Miilleri. They are handsome green birds, 

 with a patch of light creamy blue on their backs. They 

 are very common towards sunset in the lower branches of 

 the trees, and keep up a constant chattering noise until 

 past midnight. The adult males can be readily dis- 

 tinguished by their bright scarlet bills, the bills of the hen 

 birds being almost invariably white. Some ornithologists 

 consider that there are really two species of this parrot 

 because a few specimens of hen birds have been found with 

 a scarlet bill and some cock birds with a white one, but I 

 must agree with Meyer (46) that this view is erroneous. My 

 boys and I shot a great many of these birds, partly to 

 settle this vexed question and partly for food, and I found 

 without exception that those with scarlet bills were males, 

 and those with white bills were females. They live together 

 in the same trees and fly about together in the same coveys, 

 so that I feel perfectly convinced that they belong to the 

 same species. It is very rarely that we find birds of two 

 species so closely allied as these would be living together in 

 any numbers. The struggle for existence is so keen in the 

 tropical world that the laws of natural selection would soon 

 pick out that species which was the better fitted for the 

 environment and the other would go to the wall. We 

 should, therefore, not expect to find that there are two 

 closely allied species of this genus of parrots living together 

 and feeding on the same fruits in this little island, and the 

 burden of the proof goes to show that there is really only one. 

 I am surprised to read that Mr. Wallace (82) found that 



