LONGBILLED COCKATOO. 
Gould separated as a distinct species the Western Longbilled Cockatoo, 
later recording : “ All ornithologists now admit that there are two species 
of the genus Licmetis ; one inhabiting the western and the other the eastern 
portions of Australia. Living examples of both have been for some time in 
the Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London, where their differences 
are far more apparent than in the skins which have from time to time been 
sent to this country.” 
Ramsay in 1891 explained : “ The bills in the genus vary ; in those 
inhabiting the soft ground in the open plains they are longest, while others of 
the same species frequenting the stony parts of the country have the tips worn 
down and the length of the upper mandible shorter. The western form, 
L. pastinator , is a larger bird than the South Australian and New South Wales 
species, L. nasicus ; it may also be distinguished by its larger bill and the 
salmon tint of the basal portion of the feathers of the lores, head, neck and 
chest ; in A. nasicus there is a distinct frontal band and a large patch, almost 
scarlet on the lore and over the eye, narrower but distinctly marked in front 
and behind the eye. A large series of specimens recently examined from 
South Australia, the central portion of New South Wales, and from South- 
west and West Australia, tend to prove the distinctness of these two forms, 
which previously, from insufficient material, were considered only to be local 
varieties of one and the same species.” 
Salvadori in the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, Vol. XX., 
p. 134, 1890, admitted L. pastinator as a distinct species with the diagnosis : 
“ Very much like L. nasica, only a little larger, the naked space round the 
eyes larger and darker, of a blue lead colour,” and the remark : “ I have seen 
living specimens in the Menagerie of the Zoological Society of London ; they 
show most clearly those distinctive characters which, according to Gould, are 
not so apparent in dry skins.” \\ 
North, in the Aust. ,Mus. Spec. Cat., No. 1, Vol. III., p. 95, 1911, wrote: 
“ Licmetis pastinator is undoubtedly a good and distinct species, and even in 
dried skins the specific characters are apparent. Its larger size, paler and 
more circumscribed colouring of the head, hind-neck and throat, which does 
not extend on to the breast, and the rich sulphur-yellow of the inner webs of 
the quills and most of the tail-feathers will readily serve to distinguish it from 
the eastern species, Licmetis nasica .” 
Notwithstanding these opinions I regarded them as only sub specifically 
distinct when I prepared my “ Reference List to the Birds of Australia ” 
{Nov. Zool., Vol. XVIII., 1912). I have ever since continued this usage but 
recently proposed ( Austral Avian Record, Vol. III., p. 57, Apl. 7, 1910) 
VOL. VI. 
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