THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA. 
locality ; if the latter it is confusing as workers not intimately acquainted 
with the species would add this reference to their synonymy to the misleading 
of others : such has been not an uncommon occurrence in connection with these 
Parrakeets. 
Captain S. A. White has 'written me : “ This bird was rather plentiful 
in the dry big gum country round the foot of Mount Tambourine, Queensland, 
but as soon as we began to ascend the mount they disappeared. We flushed 
the birds from the dry grass amongst the timber.” 
Mr. Edwin Ashby has noted : “ I have skinned specimens from Woodford 
in South Queensland where they are common, but I was very interested when 
on a short visit to Emmaville in the New England district of New South Wales 
to hear that now and again a flock of these birds come to that locality. Although 
I did not actually see them myself yet the description was so clear that there 
could not be any doubt. The altitude would be fully 1500 ft. and country 
on the dry side.” 
In the Austr. Mus. Spec. Cat., No. 1, Vol. III., p. 125, there is a note 
from Mr. Robert Grant : “ When collecting towards the latter end of 1882, 
on an adjoining run to Glenariff Station, I was surprised by flushing a pair of 
‘ Moreton Bay Rosellas ’ from a Wilga tree. They settled on another tree 
some distance away, and I at once followed them up, and was fortunate in 
procuring both birds, which proved to be male and female. This was the 
only time I have seen Platycercus pallidiceps in that part of New South 
Wales.” 
North in the same place observes : “ In no species of the genus Platycercus 
is individual variation so marked as in the Pale-headed Parrakeet, or ‘ Moreton 
Bay Rosella.’ The above described specimen is what I regard as the typical 
and more commonly met with form, but it is possible for one to obtain a dozen 
or more variations of it. . . . Platycercus airmthusia Gould, is a northern 
race of P. pallidiceps inhabiting the Cape York Peninsula. Specimens from 
the neighbourhood of Cairns, Queensland, are intermediate between the two 
forms.” 
Salvadori determined P. pallidiceps and P. amathusia as distinct species 
though Ramsay simultaneous^ correctly regarded the two as only varietally 
separable. Consequently Salvadori’s action was accepted until 1912 when I 
made up my “ Reference List ” and revived Latham’s name for the species 
thus : “ Salvadori dismissed P. adscitus as indeterminable after trying to fix 
it on P. palliceps Vigors and Horsfield, but in just the characters wherein 
P. palliceps failed to fulfil the description the form from Cooktown agrees. 
It was described as the “ Blue-cheeked ” Parrot by Latham, the very name 
chosen by the A.O.U. Vernac. Comm, for the Cape York form, and it would 
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