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Show 1882.] MR. P. L. SCLATER ON RUPPELL's PARROT. 577 It approaches the figure of Scrobicularia rostrata of H. Adams (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1868, pl. xxviii. f. 15), but is larger, is not so coarsely sculptured, and is not merely convex, but ventricose. In the same rich collection is a somewhat distorted shell marked as the Thracia (!!) trigona of the ' Samarang' (pl. 24. fig. 8), and possibly a form of our L. spectabilis. All three, even if different, are Leptomya. Figures of m y three species will be found in the Journ. Proc. Linn. Soc. Zool. 1882, vol. xvi. pl. 12. 6. Note on Riippell's Parrot. By P. L. SCLATER, M.A., Ph.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Society. [Received June 15, 1882.] (Plate XLII.) In 1848 the late Mr. G. R. Gray described and figured in the Society's ' Proceedings' *• a new species of Parrot from Western Africa, from a specimen that had lived for about twelve months in the Gardens, and proposed to call it Psittacus rueppelli. Mr. Gray quite sufficiently described it as of a " uniform dark bronze-colour, with the lesser and underwing-coverts bright yellow ; the feathers of the thigh orange-yellow." In 1852 the late Mr. Strickland aud I met with examples of this Parrot in the collection formed in Damara-land by Mr. Andersson, of which an account was given by us in Jardine's ' Contributions to Ornithology ' for that year (p. 156). Finding that some of the specimens procured by Mr. Andersson agreed with Mr. Gray's description, while others differed in having the rump and under tail-coverts margined with glaucous blue, we not unnaturally concluded that the latter (being the more brightly coloured birds) were of the male sex, and that Mr. Gray had described and figured a female bird 2. The same view as to the colour of the sexes in this Parrot was subsequently adopted by Dr. Hartlaub (Orn. West-Afr. p. 168); while Dr. Finsch (Papag. ii. p. 498) and Schlegel (Mus. de P.-B., Psittaci, p. 36) described the sexes as alike, and as both having the blue colour on the rump and under tail-coverts. But, so far as I can at present make out, the strange fact appears to be that in this species the blue on the rump and under tail-coverts is the characteristic of the female sex. Such at least is the case in four examples of this Parrot (two of each form), which were acquired by the Society in April last3, and which have since died, and have been carefully dissected in our Prosector's Office. In two other examples of this 1 P. Z. S. 1848, p. 125, Aves, pl. 5. % Mr. Andersson himself, in his 'Birds of Damara Land' (p. 215), published by Mr. Gurney in 1872, has noted that in some female examples of Pyocephalus rueppelli the blue colour is certainly present. 3 Vide supra, p. 421. |
