GOLDEN-SHOULDERED PARROT. 
were brought home by Mr. Elsey, a year or two prior to Mr. Brown’s death. 
On comparing these with the drawing made at least forty years before, no 
doubt remained in my mind as to its having been made from an example of 
this species. This, then, is one of the novelties for which we are indebted to 
the explorations of A. C. Gregory, Esq. ; and I trust it may not be the last 
I shall have to characterize through the researches of this intrepid traveller, 
Mr. Elsey, who, as is well known, accompanied the expedition to the Victoria 
River, obtained three examples — a male, a female, and a young bird — all of 
which are now in our national collection. In the notes accompanying the 
specimens, Mr. Elsey states that they were procured on the 14th of September, 
1856, in lat. 18° S. and long. 141° 33' E., and that their crops contained some 
monocotyledonous seeds.” 
Since Elsey’s time no specimens of the particular form procured by him 
have been preserved. The localitj?- is very close to the settlement of Normanton, 
and Kemp, on my behalf, made especial search in that locality without result. 
At the present time Elsey’s form may have become extinct or it was an 
aberration, the former being the more probable. The drawing Gould referred 
to as made by Bauer is preserved in the British Museum (Natural History) 
and is not of Gould’s form but is of the bird since met with not uncommonly 
to the westward of Elsey’s locality and whose complex history here follows. 
When Ramsay drew up his Catalogue of the Psittaci in the Australian 
Museum, in 1891, he had no specimens, and at the same time the original Elsey 
specimens were all that were in the British Museum. 
In 1898, however, Collett described in the Proc. Zool. Soc. ( Lond .) a 
similar bird he had received from Mary River, Northern Territory, collected 
by Dahl. He called it Psephotus dissimilis, and wrote : “Nearest to Psephotus 
chrysopterygius but lacks the yellow band across the forehead ; forehead, 
lores and crown dark chestnut. This Parrot was met with here and there 
in small flocks in Arnhem Land, particularly between Pine Creek and Catherine 
River, but did not appear to be common. It was seen only during the dry 
season. It possesses a singular jarring cry and, like all Parrots, is reluctant 
to forsake a wounded companion.” 
Simultaneously North stated in the Pec. Austr. Mus., Vol. III., p. 87, 
1898, that he had secured in Sydney a living example of P. chrysopterygius 
obtained near Port Darwin, the first noted since Elsey’s time. As a footnote 
he added that in the Proc. Zool. Soc. {Lond.), just received, he observed that 
the Society had purchased a pair the previous March (1897). He was, of course, 
unaware that Collett had distinguished the form he was examining, and 
apparently did not observe or emphasise the differences between the living 
bird and Gould’s figures. 
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