imply a wide and general range, while Peale omitted it entirely, though his party 

 obtained the examples vouched for by Cassin. Gmelin called the bird Loxia psittacea, 

 and, as will be seen from Dr. Gadow's ' Remarks ' in this work, it is truly Fringilline 

 and is near Loxioides, though belonging to a different genus, which Temminck rightly 

 felt justified in separating in 1820 under the title of Psittirostra : I agree, however, 

 with that author's later opinion that the more correct form is Psittacirostra, which 

 was accepted at a subsequent date by Cuvier. In his ' Manuel,' Temminck made the 

 mistake of considering the female, of which he had only a drawing, to be a distinct 

 species ; but when figuring it in the ' Planches Coloriees ' he corrected the error *, 

 Latham in his ' General History of Birds ' having meanwhile drawn attention to it. 



In the former author's own copy of the catalogue of the sale of the Bullock Collection 

 (23rd day), a single specimen of this bird is marked " £1 Is. — genre nouveau : " in 

 another copy, with annotations supposed to be in Latham's handwriting, the same 

 example is marked " Lichtenstein ; " but this is probably a mistake, as the genus does 

 not occur in Lichtenstein's " Verzeichniss," and therefore presumably was not in the 

 Berlin Museum in 1823. Temminck, moreover, in the 'Planches Coloriees,' remarks: 

 " Le Musee des Pays-Bas possede les sujets achetes a la vente du Bullockian Museum, 

 a Londres," where " sujets " is in the plural. This would indicate that the Museum of 

 the Netherlands contained more examples than one, though whether they all came 

 from Bullock's collection must remain somewhat doubtful. A male and female are 

 also in the Derby Museum at Liverpool (marked 1829 and 1829 a in Lord Derby's old 

 catalogue), while W. W. Ellis has a drawing of the bird among those preserved in 

 the British Museum (No. 79, " 1779 "). 



This well-known species is distributed throughout the Sandwich group, and I obtained 

 specimens from every island save Oahu and Maui, on the former of which I have good 

 reason to believe it has become extinct or else extremely scarce. I cannot detect 

 any appreciable difference between examples from the various islands, although I think 

 those I obtained on Lanai are brightest in plumage. The size and shape of the 

 curiously formed bill varies considerably, especially in the males : the two woodcuts 

 on the next page will serve to show the variation referred to. 



Next to Vestiaria coccinea, it is perhaps the most noticeable of the forest-birds of 

 the islands, the bright yellow head and neck of the adult males rendering them very 

 conspicuous in their straight dashing flight from tree to tree. The immature males 

 and females, which lack this distinctive feature, might easily be mistaken for the 

 sombre-coloured Phwomis obscura ; but the constant twittering which the Ou almost 

 invariably makes while feeding at once betrays its identity. Freshly killed examples 

 possess a peculiar scent, which I did not observe in any other forest-dwelling species ; 

 it is probably due to their extremely varied fruit-diet. 



Though Psittacirostra, as remarked above, is generally distributed throughout the 

 group, in no locality does it seem to be abundant ; but I am told by Mr. Francis Gay 



1 The figure in the PL Col. is absurdly overcoloured, being of a bright grass-green, whereas the true colour 

 is decidedly tinged with olive. 



