The Platyoercua iimstfrsiitnus never came under his notice at all, and (luring the forty years that have 
elapsed since his Eandbook was published, only two specimens have been preserved for the pen and brush of 
the ornithologist- an old and a young bird. The lirst was found by Dr. Ramsay (to whom we are indebted 
for all thai IB yet known of it), in the Sydney Museum, and spoken of by him as "one of the few relics of 
our earh explorers that 1 found left in the Museum." In compliment to Mr. George Masters, who drew his 
attention to the bird as a new specimen, he called it Platycercus mastersictmis, or Masters' Parrakcet. Evidently 
DO previous naturalist had considered it worthy of classification, or else believed it to bean abnormal specimen 
of in already recognised type. It is scarcely to be wondered at if this were the case, for the bird is singularly 
devoid of the i^ay plumage one naturally associates with parrakeets, and it might easily pass for a faded, ill-used 
(emale member of half-a-dozen other species, or a badly-plumaged Platycercus eximius, starved and altogether 
ill-treated. Seated among the grey-green gum leaves, the Platycercus mastersianus would hardly be 
observed may be that very likeness to the eucalypts among which it lives had hidden it from previous notice. 
The younu- bird referred to was obtained recently in the northern interior portion of New South Wales. 
Size : Adult, total length, about eleven inches ; wing, five inches nine lines and a-half ; tail, six inches 
three lines and a-half: tarsus, six inches nine lines and a-half; bill, eight lines and a-half. 
Colouring: The front, top of head, nape and ear coverts, crimson, mottled with yellow on the sides of 
the head, ear coverts and nape; feathers of the hind neck and back, yellowish at the tips; blackish on concealed 
portions, those on the neck washed with red, and tinged on the sides with bluish green; rump and upper tail 
coverts, crimson, the outer series of the latter greenish; scapulars, black, broadly margined with yellow, 
mingled with red and blue; shoulders, deep blue; smaller coverts, deep blue, centred with black, or black, 
margined with blue: medium coverts, light blue; outer web of primaries and secondaries, blue ; inner web and 
tips of primaries, black ; underside of wing, black, traversed about the middle of the quills with an indistinct, 
broken white hand in a young specimen this band is complete) ; under wing coverts, blue; cheeks, blue, palest 
near mandible; under tail coverts, crimson; chest, bluish green, margined with yellow, many of the feathers 
centred with a large crimson spot; abdomen and thinks, bluish green, the tips of the lower flank feathers crimson; 
tail, black below , the apical third of all, except the two centre feathers, blue, and tipped with white more largely 
on the inner than on the outer feathers; centre tail feathers above, greenish on the inner webs, blue on the outer, 
tin- res! blackish at the base, blue on the outer Avebs, the anterior third of each feather light blue, and tipped 
with white, the spot increasing in size as the feather is more internal. Bill, bluish at the base, whitish at the 
tip (probably faded) ; feet, dark brown ; iris, in a young living example, dark hazel. 
Associated with Platycercus mastersianus by Ramsay is a parrakeet closely resembling it, and called 
by him Vlatycercus mastersU. Of a very similar size, this latter differs entirely in appearance from its congener 
both in shape and colouring. The head is dull red, speckled with yellow; throat, pale blue, deepening into bluish 
purple; breast, speckled red and yellow; abdomen, pale metallic blue; under tail coverts, red ; back, dull red, 
yellow and black ; wings, pale bluish purple on the shoulders, deepening into rich bluish purple in the primaries 
and secondaries; tertiaries, black on the tips and outer edges; the forked uneven tail, pale blue, tipped with 
white on the under surfaces ; black on the upper surfaces. Habitats : Interior, New South Wales. 
Habitats of Platycercus master siemm : Interior, New South Wales ; Wide Bay District (Queensland) 
PL ATYCE ROUS SPURIUS. (Kuhi.) 
SPURIOUS PARRAKEET. Genus: Platycercus. 
f TO the close observer of the laws that govern so small a matter in detail as the arrangement of people and 
things in their relative order of consequence, the first and last names on a list are significant of much, and 
carry, to a large extent, an unwritten volume merely in their order of procedure. 
