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Young. The plumage of the young bird does not differ appreciably from that of the adult. 
Varieties. Like many other members of the large natural family to which it belongs, this species exhibits a 
strong tendency to variability of colour ; and the slight differences which some of the ornithologists of 
Europe have recognized as sufficient specific characters are clearly of no value whatever. A specimen 
brought to me by a native, in the Kaipara district, many years ago, had the whole of the plumage of a 
brilliant scarlet-red. Another, obtained in the woods in the neighbourhood of Wellington, had the green 
plumage thickly studded all over with spots of red; this handsome bird was caged, and at the first moult 
the whole of the spots disappeared. An example of this species in the British Museum has the abdomen 
and under tail-coverts bright yellow mixed with green; the thigh-spots very large and bright; the rump 
stained, and the tail obscurely banded on the upper surface, with dull yellow. 
A Southland paper thus describes a specimen which was shot in the Seaward Bush : “ One of the 
most beautifully plumaged native birds we have ever seen was shown us yesterday by Mr. James Morton, a 
taxidermist, to whom it had been handed to be stuffed. It is a variety of Platycercus nova zealandia, and 
proved to be a male. Instead of the usual green hue, the feathers of the one m question are tipped and 
edged with green on a beautiful lemon-yellow ground— the small feathers of the wing showing a steel-blue 
tint at the edges, or mixed bronze and yellow. The large pinion-feathers are yellow and green, merging 
into bronze at the tips— the tail-feathers being similarly coloured. The beak is surmounted by a crescent- 
shaped patch, of blood-red, and there are two others on the back.” 
I have in my possession a feather of rich uniform yellow with a white shaft, from the tail of a tame 
bird of this species, formerly in the possession of the Wellington Working Men’s Club, in which all the rest 
of the plumage was of the normal colour. I am indebted to Mr. W. W. Smith, of Oamaru, for a curious 
specimen (?) in which the back, rump, upper surface of wings, and nearly the whole of the abdomen are 
marked with irregular patches of pale lemon-yellow. 
There are three very beautiful varieties in the Otago Museum : — 
No 1 has the entire plumage of a uniform vivid canary-yellow, except that the vertex, ear-coverts, and 
uropyMal spots are crimson as in the ordinary bird ; there are a few dashes of ultramarine blue on the 
tertials and some “ invisible green ” markings on the quills and tail-feathers, the shafts of which are white, 
as though the normal colours had here endeavoured to assert themselves ; the bill, feet, and claws are white. 
The crimson markings, especially on the sides of the uropygium, are bright and conspicuous, and the bird 
altogether is as lovely an object as the most ardent ornithologist could desire as the type of a new species ; 
but, alas, it is nothing but a “ freak of nature ” whose exact counterpart may never occur again. This 
specimen was obtained at Seaward Bush in October 1874, and was presented to the Museum by 
Mr. J. M. Broderick. 
No. 2 is a beautiful instance of cyanism. The entire plumage of the cheeks, throat, and underparts is 
a delicate marine-blue, or isabelline, the feathers on the lower parts and sides of the body nanowly edged 
with dusky; supplying the place of crimson on the vertex and ear-coverts is a pale yellowish or greyish 
brown : the rest of the upper surface is a deeper isabelline, varied with a still darker shade of blue, and with 
the feathers more distinctly margined with dusky ; there are no uropygial spots ; the quills are marked with 
ultramarine as in ordinary specimens; the tail-feathers have greenish reflections, with a wash of blue down 
the outer vane of the lateral ones, the under surface of wings and tail being dusky brown. Bill and feet of 
the normal colours. This is the Parrakeet mentioned by Prof. Hutton as the “blue variety from 
Southland.” . . „ ... 
No. 3 is a very different looking bird, from Invercargill. The entire plumage is dirty yellow, with a 
varying wash of green, which is deepest on the underparts and least apparent on the quills and tail-feathers ; 
the vertex and ear-coverts are crimson, the former having a flush of canary-yellow along its posterior edge ; 
the shafts of the quills and tail-feathers are white, and on the primaries and tertials there is just the famtest 
indication of the normal colour in a delicate shade of greenish blue ; the upper wing-coverts are washed on 
their edges with green ; the crimson uropygial spots are present, and the bill and feet are the same as in 
ordinary specimens. 
Note The synonymy of the genus Platycercus, as may be seen above, has been involved in much confusion. 
We are indebted to Dr. Otto Finsch, of Bremen, for a complete elucidation of the subject, in his able 
Monograph of the Psittaeidie (Die Papageien, ii. p. 275, 1868). Examples of P. nova zealandia vary 
