ECLECTUS POLYCHLORUS.

Green Lory.

Psittacus polychlorus, Scopoli, Del. Faun. et Flor. Insubr. ii. p. 87 (1786).

Psittacus sinensis, Gmelin, S. N. i. p. 337 (1788).

Psittacus magnus, Gmelin, S. N.i. p. 344 (1788).

Psittacus viridis, Latham, Index Orn. i. p. 125 (1790).

Psittacus lateralis, Shaw, Gen. Zool. viii. p. 490 (1811).

Mascarinus prasinus, Lesson, Traité, p. 188 (1831).

Eclectus linnei, Wagler, Monogr. Psittac. p. 571, pl. xxii. (1832).

Eclectus polychlorus, Gray, Genera of Birds, ii. p. 418 (1845).—Id. List Psittacide Brit. Mus. p. 66 (1859).
Eclectus puniceus, Bonap. P. Z. S. 1849, p. 142.—Rosenb. J. f. O. 1864, p. 114.

Eclectus grandis, Bonap. Consp. Gen. Av. i. p. 4 (1850).—Id. Rev. et Mag. de Zool. 1854, p. 155.
Eclectus westermanni, Bp. Consp. 1. p. 4 (1850).

 

Eos puniceus, Lichtenstem, Nomencl. Av. p. 71 (1854).

Polychlorus magnus, Sclater, P. Z. S. 1857, p. 226.

Mascarinus polychlorus, Finsch, Nederl. Tijdsch. Berigten, p. xvi. (1863).

Psittacodis magna, Rosenb. Tijdschr. Nederl. Indie, 1863, p. 226.—Id. J. f. O. 1864, p. 114.
Psittacus linnei, Finsch, Neu-Guinea, p. 157 (1865).

 

Were any thing required to assure the student of ornithology that there is still plenty of work to do in the
science, the history of the present bird would afford a text for a discourse on that subject. A cage-bird
in every menagerie of any repute, described and figured over and over again during the last hundred years,

and for the last twenty years by no means rare in collections, the present species might have been supposed

 

to have been well understood. No one, therefore, was prepared for the astounding assertion made by Dr.
Meyer in 1874, that the Lories of the Moluccas, considered by everybody to represent many distinct
species, were nothing but the males and females of perhaps three. I candidly confess that I was for
a long time extremely sceptical on the subject; but after examining specimens sent me by Dr. Meyer,
I must admit that he is perfectly right, and that this curious fact must be accepted by ornithologists. The

 

story comes better from Dr. Meyer himself than from me; and I therefore give the note which he has
just forwarded :—

««« When crossing the sea from the Island of Mafoor to the Island of Mysore, in Geelvink Bay, in the
year 1873, having spread out before me, on board of my small vessel, the ornithological harvest which I had
reaped on Mafoor, it struck me that all the specimens of “clectus polychlorus, Scop., were labelled as
males, and all those of ZL. dinne?, Wagler, as females ; and I had six green males ( polychlorus) and nine red
females (Zinnei). The suspicion then arose in my mind that it could not have been by chance that I had
only shot the males of LZ. polychlorus and the females of L. hnn@i.’

‘‘With these words of introduction I commenced the first paper which I published on the sexual
differences in the genus He/lectus, in the year 1874 (Verh. d. zool.-bot. Ges. Wien, 1874, p. 179, and Zool.
Garten, May 1874, p. 161). Since then I have been obliged to write three more notes on the same
subject, because at first the opinion that the green parrots are indeed the males of the red ones was almost
universally contested. Nevertheless I already said in my first paper (2. c.), ‘The fact, discovered by
myself, is thoroughly ascertained, and cannot be doubted.’

“In my second note (Mitth. d. k. zool. Mus. Dresden, i. p. 11, 1875) I chiefly disputed Prof. Schlegel’s
view, who had promulgated the following opinion, and supposed it to be well founded :—‘Adopting this
hypothesis, we should be obliged in the meantime to accuse of negligence four of our most experienced
travellers ; and to establish among the parrots the quite exceptional case of a singular sexual difference
would be the more remarkable, as it would besides offer in the females variations constant according to
the localities’ (Mus. d’Hist. Nat. des Pays-Bas, Psitt. 1874, p. 17). By the four most experienced travellers
of the Leiden Museum, Prof. Schlegel meant, as far as I am aware, Salomon Miiller, Dr. Bernstein, Hoedt,
and Von Rosenberg. But I proved that even the facts published in the Catalogues of the Leiden Museum
of E. intermedius (green) six are marked as

 

 

show that I am right, as, for instance, among seven specimens

males and only one as a female ; and, on the other hand, among fourteen specimens of EL. grandis (red)