Birds of Celebes: Loriidae. 
119 
obtained, but these, according to Meyer’s experience, as a rule show signs of 
having recently been in captivity in their worn tail-feathers, etc., and are to 
be regarded as specimens brought over from Sangi (or, as Dr. Platen affirms, 
Talaut) in the boats of the natives, and which have escaped. 
At Manado “there seldom arrives a boat without bringing some living birds 
or the like” (Meyer J 3); and the locality Halmahera once stated to be the 
home of this species was most likely recorded on the ground of examples 
having been bought or of escaped birds shot there. The species as Mr. Wallace 
remarks is also brought over to Ternate, and Meyer saw a pair even in Cebu 
in the Philippines (j 3). 
To a similar cause, perhaps, is due the labelling of an example of Eos 
riciniata and two of Lorius garrulus in the British Museum as from Celebes, 
species belonging to the Halmahera group as shown by Count Salvador! (Cat. 
B. XX, 29, 41). 
Eos histrio was first recorded from its true habitat, the Sangi Islands, by 
Forsten; later it was again obtained there by Mr. Wallace, and in the year 
1871 in numerous examples by Meyer, and later again by Dr. Fischer. 
Writing in 1887 Dr. Platen remarks that it is by no means a common bird 
in Great Sangi, but that, in consequence of the ever-widening extent of the 
cocoa-nut plantations, it has retired more and more into the mountainous interior 
of the country, and the caged examples both here and those brought to Manado 
are derived from the neighbouring Talaut Islands (j 4); but it is perhaps not 
impossible that the time of year of Dr. Platen’s visit — the rainy season — 
may have had something to do with their scarcity near that part of the coast 
where he collected. The' Talaut Islands, as mentioned above, were first noted 
as a locality for Eos histrio by von Rosenberg. Here the sjrecies was recently 
found in great abundance by Dr. Hickson, who confirms Dr. Platen’s state- 
ment in remarking that it is comparatively rare in the Sangi Islands. An 
observation of much interest to ornithologists is recorded by Dr. Hickson 
in his account of his visit to the Saha Islands (Saka of the Dutch maps), two 
small islands, the one about three-quarters of a mile in diameter, the other 
about half as large, lying three or four miles, apparently, from the coast of 
Salibabu, one of the larger islands of the Talaut group. “My attention was 
called to these islands hy a flock of lories, consisting of many hundred indivi- 
duals, which flew from the main island to the larger of them as the sun was 
setting on the previous evening”. This is one of the rare instances on record 
of a local species in these parts of the tropics voluntarily crossing a stretch of 
sea between one island and another, though indeed the birds probably only 
flew to their roosting place. 
The circumstance, that wider excursions as a rule do not appear to occur 
frequently in these islands, tends to offer a contradiction to the opinion of 
writers of pessimistic views that the struggle for existence is distressingly severe. 
At all events the fact that birds of many families in the tropics become diffe- 
