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Show 1881.] MR. P. L. SCLATER ON THE GENUS CHRYSOTIS. 627 the Society a specimen of the Kea (Nestor notabilis), or Mountain Parrot, a bird celebrated (or, rather, notorious) for its sheep-destroying proclivities. " Many abler pens than mine have already written about their habits; but I was fortunate enough to be, perhaps, the first to send home a specimen of their work in the shape of the colon and lumbar vertebrae of a sheep, in which colotomy had been performed by one of these birds. "This specimen was shown at a meeting of the Pathological Society by m y friend and former master Mr. John Wood, F.R.S., and is now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeous of England. "The bird which I am now sending home has been in m y possession for nearly two years. It was caught in the act of attacking some sheep which a shepherd was bringing down off the tops of some ranges in the back country. He luckily succeeded in knocking it over with a stone, cut its wings, and brought his captive down. In effecting the capture the shepherd suffered considerable loss as to his trousers and other garments, and received many scratches from its formidable beak and claws. These same scratches had not entirely healed when he came down here under m y care some ten days later, suffering from a broken leg (this, by the way, was not done by the Kea). " While I have had the Kea, his diet has consisted mainly of mutton, raw ; he does not care for cooked meat, but will take it if very hungry. Occasionally he will take beef; and he is fond of pork. Popularly he is said to prefer fat; but in confinement he chooses the lean and leaves the fat. He does not care for biscuit; but he likes the seed of the sow-thistle." Mr. Sclater laid on the table a skin of one of the examples of the Parrot, of the genus Chrysotis, of which the Society had of late years received several examples from the island of St. Lucia, and which he had hitherto called Chrysotis bouqueti\; and explained the reasons which had induced him to the conclusion that he had wrongly determined the species, which was really G. versicolor (Midler)2, while the species from Dominica recently named by Mr. Lawrence C. ni-chollsi3 was, in his opinion, the true C. bouqueti. Mr. Sclater remarked that the exact habitats of all the four species of Chrysotis of the Lesser Antilles were now known to us, and were as follows:- 1. C. augusta, Dominica. 2. C. bouqueti, Dominica. 3. C. versicolor, St. Lucia. 4. G. guildingi, St. Vincent. It was singular that no species of Chrysotis had yet been dis- 1 P. Z. S. 1874, p. 323, 1875, p. 61, t. xx. et p. 316 ; et List of An. 1877, p. 263, et 1879, p. 295. .. 2 C. cyanopis, Finsch, Papag. u. p. oZ6, 5 Pr. U.S. Nat. Mus. 1880, p. 254. |