Mr. A. R. Wallace's notes on the 
318 
XXVII.— Notes on the Fruit-Pigeons of the Genus Treron. 
By Alfred R. Wallace. 
In the ‘Nederlandsell Tijdschrift voor de Dierkunde/ 1863, p. 73, 
is a paper by Prof. Schlegel on some species of Treron , in which 
he declares that “ most naturalists are ignorant of the laws which 
rule the coloration of the plumage in these birds,” and “ that even 
in the work of Bonaparte one finds constantly repeated the very 
common error, that the females have constantly a different plumage 
from that of the males.” And further on he states that, in all 
the species allied to Treron aromatica and T. vernans, “ as a 
general rule, the perfect plumage of the adult females does not differ 
from that of the adult males.” 
Having myself collected some hundreds of specimens of Treron 
of almost all the species inhabiting the Malay Archipelago, and 
having found, by personal dissection of the specimens, that in 
almost all the species the sexes differ greatly, I was of course 
very much surprised at the above statements. On looking over 
my specimens, however, I see no reason to alter my opinion. Of 
Treron capellei, Bp., T. aromatica, Gm., T. nipalensis, Bl., T. 
griseicauda, Gr., T. pulverulent a, Wall., T. fulvicollis, Wag*., T. 
olax, Temm., and T. vernans, Gm., I have adult females strikingly 
different in coloration from the males. I believe any ornithologist 
by a mere examination of the specimens would be satisfied that 
such is the case; but I have the further evidence of having in 
many cases found large masses of ova in these female birds, and 
also in the fact that they were in many cases shot from the same 
flock with the males, that they occurred in nearly equal quan¬ 
tities, and that in a large series of female specimens the cha¬ 
racters are as uniform and constant as in the males, which cer¬ 
tainly would not be the case were they immature birds, or in 
the act of changing their plumage. I am therefore forced to 
the conclusion that, the Malayan Collections in the Leyden 
Museum having been generally formed through the agency of 
native bird-skinners (most of whom I have myself employed as 
hunters), the sexes of the specimens have not been accurately 
determined. 
I will now make a few observations on the species mentioned 
