Named in Honour
Despite years of frustration induced by late payments, Gould eventually honoured McCoy, naming a small fig-parrot after the tenacious Professor:
'I felt great pleasure in adopting the suggestion of that gentleman that I should confer upon the species the name of Professor M'Coy, to whom so much of the progress of science in the Australian colonies is due. Unfortunately this little bird is already burdened with a synonym; for nearly at the same time that I described it, Professor M'Coy himself sent a description of this species, proposing for it the name of C. Leadbeateri. He gives the characters as follows: -"The general size, shape, and colouring is nearly like that of C. Coxeni; but it is somewhat smaller, and has in both sexes an oblong patch of red on the forehead, just over the cere. It differs also in habitat, frequenting the scrubs more than C. Coxeni does.'
As is the case with the Helmeted Honeyeater, which both Gould and McCoy claimed and described as a new species, the little fig-parrot is now regarded as a subspecies of the Double-eyed Fig-Parrot.
By the time of its publication in Gould's Supplement in April 1875 Gould's health was failing. McCoy was suffering in a different way, unable to expend funds without the approval of the Trustees of the Museum.
Gould's last letter to McCoy offered valuable specimens, an offer that was never taken up, due to these budgetary constraints:
"This New Guinea is a wonderful country teeming with novelties, novelties which bear so much upon Australia as to render it of great interest to you."
-Letter 20 November 18761
1Anthea Fleming, 'Birds, Books and Money: McCoy's Correspondence with John Gould (1857-1876)', The Victorian Naturalist, p. 217.