could imagine for a mountain bird ; natives caught plenty and so did cats. If we have 

 another such winter I doubt whether we will have any native birds left in the Kula 

 district." 



Mrs. Francis Sinclair informs me that after stormy weather she has seen numbers of 

 these birds on the island of Niihau (where no forest now remains), to the uncongenial 

 shores of which they had been driven by gales from the adjacent island of Kauai, 

 separated by a channel 18 miles in width. 



The upper figure in my second Plate, in which no trace of scarlet is seen, and of 

 which the plumage is bright yellow-buff, I obtained on the island of Maui ; other 

 examples procured in the same locality seem to show a clearer tint of buff than those 

 from the remaining islands ; the bills in those from Maui are also slightly shorter 

 and stouter. Dr. Stejneger, however, states that a careful comparison of Mr. Knudsen's 

 four birds with three in the museum of the Smithsonian Institution, probably not from 

 Kauai, shows no tangible difference in colour or dimensions ; and with the exception 

 of these immature birds, I find this to be the case with my series, in which the islands 

 of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai, and Hawaii are represented l . 



A flowering branch of the uulei (Osteomeles antliy Hid i folia) is shown in my second 

 Plate — a low shrub with hawthorn-like flowers, among the branches of which I have 

 often seen the Iiwi disporting itself; the wood of this shrub is used by the natives in 

 the manufacture of pipes. 



Description. — Adult male. General colour above and beneath vermilion ; wing-quills 

 and tail black ; innermost secondaries white or ashy brown on the inner web ; wing- 

 coverts black, edged outwardly with crimson ; wing-lining and edge of the wing of a 

 whitish hue tinged with pinkish scarlet; iridesdark hazel; bill clear vermilion, darker 

 on maxilla; feet vermilion. 



Adult female. May always be distinguished from the male by her deeper colour, 

 especially below, where she is almost crimson. 



Immature bird. General colour greenish yellow, mottled with blackish spots at the 

 tips of the feathers ; wing-quills and tail black; hides dark hazel; bill light brownish 

 grey, maxilla yellow at margin. 



The colour of the feet and bill in a very young bird was brown-pink, the scales on 

 the tarsi darker ; the soles of the feet yellow. 



1 Reichenbach (loc. cit.) seems to have clearly understood the changes of plumage in this species, which 

 he fully describes ; while he figures, grouped together, an adult female, a young bird with no trace of scarlet, 

 and a second with a few buff feathers about the head and neck. These drawings are accurate enough, but, 

 from an artistic point of view, are caricatures of a most beautiful and elegant bird; nor is the transition state 

 so completely illustrated as to make a new figure superfluous. Dr. Pinsch alone gives correctly the colour 

 of the bill of the adult of this species, Latham and Merrem describing it as whitish : in Merrem's figure 

 accordingly the bill is almost colourless ; this is probably due to the fact that in skins the colour of both bill 

 and legs soon fades. 



