OCR Text |
Show 160 DR. J. MURIE ON GEOPSITTACUS OCCIDENTALIS. [Feb. 27, The tail, 4\ inches in greatest length, possesses 12 rectrices, each of an acuminate form. The four middle feathers are barely so long as the two outside of them. The remaining outermost ones decrease from within outwards, so that the posterior terminal edge of the tail has a rounded or deep-arched contour. Notwithstanding the scantiness of material originally at his command, Mr. Gould nevertheless had felicitiously caught the main characters of this somewhat remarkable, or, as he termed it, " anomalous bird." In his later ' Supplement to the Birds of Australia,' he has given a very charming figure of it from the living specimen, and by his own pencil. This delineation, in other respects excellent, seems to me to have the head and body rather fuller than natural ; in this way the resemblance to Pezoporus is not so striking as under more favourable circumstances it might be. Of course one cannot well judge or compare living animals with stuffed specimens ; but as far as m y examination extends, excepting, it may be, in the length of tail, there is a much nearer likeness in form between these birds than Mr. Gould has admitted in his text. Fig. 1. Head of Geopsittacus (Pezoporus) occidentalis. Nat. size. Drawn from the bird immediately after death. Besides colour and build of body, the beak and legs, among the external characters, are worthy of especial remark. The upper mandible is thick-set, and projects quite beyond the lower; it is 5'" long and 3'" deep at its basal end. The culmen is broad, which gives the beak a flattened appearance anteriorly. The lateral tooth-like expansion near the angle of the gape, present in many genera of Parrots, is here wanting, as is the case in Pezoporus and the genus Platycercus generally. The cere, even for a Parrot, is unusually large, full, and fleshy. It is slate-coloured. Gould describes it as large and grey. The opening of the nostrils is wide, roundish, and directed upwards and outwards (see fig. 1). In front and below the cere there is a small pencil of elongated bristle-like hairs. These are directed forwards and outwards. As the bird is seen standing en the ground, the legs appear rela- |