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Canon Tristram's collection, now in Liverpool, had been brought from Lord Howe's Island in cages and were kept as pets in Norfolk Island; and then, as the value of exact data in those early days of our science was unknown, the references were made to the place whence the specimens were seen or brought. One thing however is certain, the bill in Ferdinand Bauer's sketch is evidently a monstrous growth produced by captivity, for Latham expressly describes the bill of Governor Hunter's bird as ending in a long thin point. The differences of N. norfolcensis are the dull crimson sides of face, chin, and throat; dull green head and hind neck, and the total absence of bars on the tail. The plate given herewith is a reproduction of the Liverpool bird, with the bill of Ferdinand Bauer's sketch added, as this is wanting in that bird, and in the corner a head of the specimen of N. productus, purchased for the Tring Museum, when the late Mr. Wallace's Museum at Distington, Cumberland, was dispersed.
I have carefully examined the three fine specimens of Nestor productus in the British Museum, and the conclusion I have come to is that the bird described by Gould as the adult of his N. productus was an abnormal specimen, and was in relation to normal N. productus what the aberrations called "superbus" and "esslingi" are to N. meridionalis. The bills of the British Museum specimens are very different. The one from the Bell collection has the long, thin bill, but it is at least half-an-inch to three-quarters shorter than those in the Tring and Florence specimens.
Habitat: Philip Island and probably Norfolk Island.
One in Tring, three in London, one in Florence, two in Vienna, one in Prague, two in Leyden, one in Amsterdam, are known to me.
The two specimens in the Vienna Museum were both bought in 1839. One from Ward, with a short bill, brown chest and throat, and a very wide yellow breast-band. The other from Baron von Hügel, which has a long bill and very red cheeks and chin.
