SMUTTY PARROT. 
but nevertheless of great interest, as apparently showing the erythristic 
tendency recurring. 
The species appears to have developed from the whole green basic form by 
means of suppression of the erythristic element and the domination of the 
xanthochroistic one. Apparently this suppression of the erythrism has 
allowed a latent melanistic tendency to develop and this is now in a plastic 
state. Thus on Melville Island the conditions favouring melanism, the bird 
is becoming blacker exactly as the Kangaroo Island race of P. elegans has 
developed. In the North-west, however, the conditions have operated in the 
opposite manner, and the bird shows more of the xanthochroistic phase. That 
the erythristic tendency was never completely suppressed was seen in the 
red under tail-coverts, and the North-west conditions are allowing it to recur 
so that a red forehead band is common and a wholly red head was observed 
by Gould. As noted already, this bird is common on Melville Island and 
apparently along the northern coast of Arnhem Land, yet nothing like it is 
known from the islands north of that locality nor New Guinea. 
Again the cheeks which were becoming white on the east of its range are 
becoming more blue again on the western limit. It may be that the bird is 
retaining its older plumage at the limit of its range and is developing its newer 
state at the eastern border. It will have been noted that M‘Lennan records 
two young specimens with a red breast-band, but no confirmation of such a 
phase is forthcoming, but this aberration would not be a very strange freak 
in a group so plastic as the present one. 
351 
