THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
scarlet, but the back feathers have green tips which slowly evolve into red: 
the rump remains greenish, but the tail has become blue : the blue shoulder 
patch is retained, but the cheeks have become yellowish : through this last 
feature it has been far removed from elegans , which is wrong. 
In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, two species pallidiceps 
and amathusia were included, but these are only subspecifically distinct and 
I make four subspecies of this species of which the oldest name is adscitus. This 
is a distinct evolution product as the immature is well differentiated having the 
head yellowish, speckled with blackish, the back duller in colour and the rump 
and under surface paler. In the adult, the head and cheeks are pale yellow, 
the back black scallopped with bright golden : the tail blue, but the rump like 
the underparts pale greyish blue : the blue shoulder patch is present. 
Specimens from “ Australia ” indicating the Southern part of its range, 
South Queensland, show much individual variation tending to xanthochroism ; 
the head, breast and cheeks becoming uniform yellow. 
The Northernmost birds, amathusia of the Cat. Birds have the breast 
greenish, the rump green and the lower part of the cheeks blue, while eastern 
specimens elseyi have no green breast like the typical pallidiceps, but have 
blue cheeks like amathusia, the rump being grey, much paler than the bluish 
undersurface. 
Another very distinct species is venustus. In this case we have the back 
black scallopped with pale yellow : this is the colour of the rump and under- 
surface, but the feathers are tipped with black and the bases are also black : 
it has a blue tail and blue shoulder patch, and the cheeks blue and white in 
varying proportions. The extraordinary feature is the acquisition of a black 
head. 
All these species have restricted ranges ; all are more or less variable 
in colouration, and hybrids are not uncommon. These point to recent 
evolution and before dealing with the last member of the genus which stands 
alone I may note a few items. 
We may predicate that the ancestral coloration was greenish above and 
below. We have then the normal coloration retained in Tasmania with the 
evolution of the back scallopping, the striking feature of the genus. 
In South Australia we have a direct xanthochroistic product in flaveolus. 
In West Australia we see an erythrochroistic phase slowly developing from 
a normal green phase. In East Australia this erythrism has become estab- 
lished and a tendency to melanism is seen in some parts of the range of this 
erythrism while a tendency to xanthochroism appears at another place. In 
the North and North-west we see a melanistic species established, but appar- 
ently through a xanthochroistic form and quite independent of the erythristic 
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