126 
Birds of Celebes: Loriidae. 
Count Salvadori’s excellent keys for the determination of the GreenWedge- 
tailed Lories of the subgenus Psitteuteles and the Blue-headed ones of the sub- 
genus Trichoglossus awake the attention to an interesting fact. In Celebes the 
members of both subgenera have the underside of the quills uniform shining 
brownish smoke-grey; in all parts of Australasia where they occur both sub- 
genera have the basal part of the quills crossed by a band of bright colour — 
yellow usually, but in two cases — one in each subgenus — red. The circumstance 
is, of course, suggestive of a common cause, but a difficulty to the maintaining 
of this opinion is presented by the fact that the Trichoglossus, which has the red 
band, does not occur in the same locality as the Psitteuteles with the red band, 
but one (T. rosenhergi Schl.J on Mysore Island in Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, 
and the other (Ps. chlorolepidotus) in Australia. We are, however, from the 
following circumstance able to conclude at least on good hypothetical grounds 
that the Celebesian forms are of a more recent development than the Austi'alasian 
ones : three young specimens and one female of T. meyeri described above differ 
from the old ones amongst other 7}oints in having some amount of yellow on 
the inner webs of some of the inner remiges, in one case very obviously the 
remains of a wing-band; in two or three immature specimens of T. ornatus 
also (Nrs. 3999, 6580) we find a trace of the yellow’ band on one or tw’o feathers 
of the secondaries, but not in any adult specimens, nor in other specimens not 
quite adult. This appearance indicates that T. meyeri and ornatus are sprung 
from two forms which possessed a yellow wing band'). There is thus reason 
to suppose that the Trichoglossi of Celebes are a development more recent than 
those of Australia. For this reason no one can very well advance the suppo- 
sition that the Australasian forms came from Celebes, but on the other hand it 
will generally be felt that this is some sort of evidence that Celebes was origi- 
nally colonised by Trichoglossi from Australasia , and then for some unknown 
reason they lost the wing-band in Celebes. 
Trichoglossus meyeri finds its nearest ally in T. flavoviridis Wall, of the 
Sula Islands, which shares with it the peculiarity of having no coloured band 
on the under side of the wing. As already mentioned Count Salvadori’s wmrk 
show’s that this group of Wedge-tailed Lories does not occur further East; and 
the single species inhabiting the Lesser Sunda Islands, T. euteles Temm. (a form 
which will perhaps have to he broken up into several subspecies) differs markedly 
from those of Celebes and Sula. The first notice of T. meyeri was made by 
Mr. Wallace, who obtained a specimen in Manado, but the skin was destroyed 
and the author identified the bird doubtfully svxth. flavoviridis of Sula (a 1). In 
1866 a specimen was sent to the Leyden Museum by van Duivenbode, but 
apparently not recognised as new’ by Schlegel; five years afterwards numerous 
specimens were obtained in the Minahassa and recognised as new by Dr. Meyer; 
1) Young’ specimens of Charmosyna pulchella Gray also have a very plain yello’w hand at the base of 
the secondaries and inner primaries, -which disappears in the adult. 
