OCR Text |
Show 802 DR. A. B. MEYER ON THE ECLECTI. [Nov. 20, coloured like the female-a fact which would be in accordance with numerous others in ornithology. These red patches in the Berlin specimen are chiefly in the middle of the webs, of which the edges are quite green I will not and cannot decide whether this is the general mode of changing the colour, the specimen in the Dresden Museum, above described, having just the edges of the web still red, whereas the basal part is green. g • . Besides, one of the younger male specimens from New Guinea, which I collected myself (C 1306 of the Dresden Museum), has some faint traces of red on the secondaries-a fact which I had overlooked till now: this specimen is older than the Berlin one, as the coloration of the bill clearly proves ; but it is still young; and I therefore doubt the less that the young male is always red like the female. That this has not been already shown by many specimens is a fact which I cannot sufficiently understand ; besides, Dr. Beccari writes that the young ones offer the same differences as the adult birds (Ann. Mus. Gen. vii. 715). At all events, whatever be the signification of these remarkable colorations, the specimens spoken of give very strong additional proof to m y assertion that the red Eclecti are the females of the green ones1. A short time ago Mr. Fiedler, of Agram, in the ' Orn. Central-blatt,' 1877, p. 87, reported that a green Eclectus polychlorus, dissected in his town, proved to be a female. I did not succeed in getting fuller particulars of this case, but have a suspicion that it will range among those to which Mr. Forbes, in his paper on Eclectus in 'The Ibis,' 1877, p. 281, alludes; and the Rev. George Brown's cases will perhaps come under the same head. The " o* ad." specimen, mentioned by Prof. Cabanis and Dr. Reichenow (I. c.) from New Britain, was brought over alive on the ' Gazelle,' died in Berlin, and was dissected by Prof. Peters ; it proved to be a male, and it is a green individual. Dr. Bolau has recently mentioned (Zool. Garten, 1877, p. 295) an Eclectus linnei from the" Solomon Islands, which died in the Zoological Garden of Hamburg. He kindly informed me that it was a female, and is now in the Museum Godeffroy of that town. Mr. Schmeltz was so obliging as to send me the specimen for inspection (it is No. 14519 of that Museum) ; and I remark that not only are green spots to be seen on the tertiaries, but that also some of their inner webs are nearly entirely green. This specimen shows the red of the head and throat as well as the under tail-coverts tinged with yellowish, very different from the red in the specimens from New Guinea and the islands of Geelvink Bay. I do not know whether this is an individual variation, a consequence perhaps of the state of captivity, 1 Count Salvadori mentions (Ann. Mus. Civ. Gen. vii. p. 756), on the authority of Signor d'Albertis, that this is a well-known fact in the Moluccas and N ew Guinea. If this is the case, it is to be wondered at that neither Wallace, nor Bernstein, nor Rosenberg, who all spent years in those regions, knew the Malay language well, and procured large series of males and females, nor any one else reported the well-known fact, or at least took the trouble to prove or disprove its truth. |