McAllan: Ramsay’s Solomon Islands bird types 
35 
It also appears that Ramsay exchanged some types with 
Otto Finsch when he visited the Australian Museum in 
August 1881. A memo from Finsch to Ramsay written in 
Sydney notes, “I shall come in the course of this afternoon 
in order that we may begin to make some choices in regard 
to duplicates” (letter in Ramsay papers, Mitchell Library 
ML.MSS. 1589/3). Some of the specimens concerned, 
including one evidently collected by Cockerell, were shortly 
afterwards acquired from Finsch by Count Turati and are now 
in the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, Milano (McAllan 
et al., 2005). 
Ramsay also exchanged some specimens with Giacomo 
Doria in Genoa in early 1883. The species were identified 
for Doria by Tommaso Salvadori of Turin. Salvadori was 
given some of these specimens himself. Although some of 
Cockerell’s specimens were included, no types of the taxa 
discussed here were involved. 
Several of Cockerell’s type specimens now in the 
Australian Museum were not registered into the collection 
until 1912 as they were previously part of the Ramsay 
family’s collection, known as the “Dobroyde” collection 
(Hindwood, 1970; Longmore, 1991). Although separate 
registers exist for specimens in this collection dating 
from before 1869, there are no registers for later parts of 
the collection. On this basis some types could have been 
exchanged with other collectors or institutions before the 
Australian Museum’s acquisition of the Dobroyde collection 
around 1896. This evidently includes a type specimen 
exchanged by Ramsay to The Natural History Museum in 
1895, as the exchange does not appear in the Australian 
Museum registers (Warren & Harrison, 1971). 
Type specimens collected by Cockerell 
in the Solomon Islands 
The known type specimens from Cockerell’s collections in 
the Solomon Islands are discussed below. All the specimens 
used in the description of the taxon concerned are listed, 
including those not actually collected by Cockerell. After 
each specimen number, the information found on attached 
specimen tags and in the register of the relative museum is 
quoted. 
Specimens from the Dobroyde collection in the Australian 
Museum have no additional information in the Museum’s 
registers beyond what is written on the tags and so only the 
details on the tags are given. It is unclear when the labels 
on these specimens were written. Although many of these 
tags are in Ramsay’s handwriting, some appear to have 
been written by A. J. North. North initially was the personal 
curator of Ramsay’s Dobroyde Collection in late 1886 before 
being employed by the Australian Museum (Cahill, 1998). 
Most of the non-Australian collections in Museum Victoria 
were unregistered at the time of my initial examination in 
1995. Exceptions to this were specimens of species whose 
distribution includes Australia and those that had been made 
into mounts. Consequently most of the registration numbers 
from Museum Victoria listed below that begin with a “B” 
were registered in September 1995. 
In the late 1970s there was no existing register of the 
Macleay Museum bird collection, though Stanbury (1969) 
noted registration numbers for the specimens. All the 
specimens were re-registered by Graeme Phipps in the early 
1980s (G. Phipps, pers. comm.). Consequently the Macleay 
Museum specimen numbers are totally different to those 
given by Stanbury (1969). The earliest remaining specimen 
labels attached to the Solomons collections in the Macleay 
Museum appear to have been written by George Masters. 
From the names used on the labels this may have occurred 
some time in late 1881 or early 1882 (i.e. after Ramsay’s 
description of Ptilopus lewisii at the meeting of the Linnean 
Society of NSW on 31 August 1881, but before Masters was 
aware of Ramsay’s description of Baza gurneyi which was 
published in the Journal of the Linnean Society [of London] 
in late January 1882). 
Macropygia rufocastanea Ramsay, 1879, Proceedings 4: 
314 (issued 1 December 1879) 
[= Macropygia mackinlayi arossi Tristram, 1879 (issued 
October 1879)] 
Australian Museum. Holotype: 0.18711. 
This specimen is from the Dobroyde collection and 
was registered in 1912. It is labelled in Ramsay’s hand 
“Macropygia rufo-castanea, ad male?, Solomon Islands 
(J.C.) Type of the sp. EPR”. Although specimen B.28151 
in Museum Victoria and specimen B.2222a in the Macleay 
Museum were clearly both collected by Cockerell, they 
cannot be types, as only one specimen was referred to 
in Ramsay’s description. Stanbury (1969) erroneously 
considered the Macleay Museum specimen a possible type. 
Salvadori (1880) noted that Ramsay had written him a 
letter indicating that Ramsay intended to name this taxon 
Macropygia castanea. If early Abstracts of the Proceedings 
can be found, it is possible they could antedate Tristram’s M 
arossi , as Ramsay named M. rufocastanea at the meeting of 
25 June 1879. This may well be the case as in 1882 Ramsay 
used the name rufocastanea and placed arossi in synonymy 
(Ramsay, 1882f). However, rufocastanea would be an unused 
senior synonym and not available. 
Ptilopus lewisii Ramsay, 1882, Nature 25: 282. 
[= Ptilinopus viridis lewisii (Ramsay, 1882)] 
Australian Museum. Two syntypes: A.3924, A. 11558. 
A.3924, does not have an original label. The register lists 
“Ptilopus viridis var. probably new species, Guadalcanal 
Solomon Islds, Captain Brodie and Cockerell”. 
A. 11558, the oldest label notes that it is “Ptilopus lewisi, 
Hab. Ugi Isld, sex female” and the register notes that it was 
collected by Alex Morton on Ugi and is a type. The locality 
of Ugi is incorrect for this species, and obviously is in 
error, even though this specimen was registered with other 
specimens of Ptilinopus eugeniae from Ugi. 
Part of the confusion may result from Ramsay referring 
to specimens of “ Ptilopus eugeniae ” being collected at 
Ugi in his description of P. lewisi in the Proceedings 
(1882d), however this was only in the context of pointing 
out that P. eugeniae was not the same as P. lewisi. Ramsay 
(1882f) noted that P. lewisi was represented in Cockerell’s 
collections. Furthermore, when Ramsay described the taxon, 
he specifically noted that it was included amongst Cockerell’s 
specimens referred to in the first 1879 Proceedings paper 
