288 Mr. Vicors’s and Dr. HonsrrErp's Description of the 
ders this singular deviation from the general form of the Parrot's 
tongue less surprising. Our characters of the tongue are drawn 
from a specimen belonging to a species of this genus, which was 
for some time alive in this country: and our inferences con- 
cerning its use are strongly confirmed by the observations of 
Mr. Caley on the manners of some species, extracts from which 
will accompany our descriptions of the birds. It is to be re- 
marked, that although the Parrots are in general a long-lived 
race, and of all birds perhaps the most easily reared, and 
although the birds of the present group are most numerous in. 
New Holland, few of them have been kept alive for any length 
of time in a state of confinement. Ignorance most probably 
of their natural mode of feeding has occasioned this difficulty in 
rearing them. 
We have reason to believe that the next adjoining group of 
the present subfamily, the genus Lorius of the Eastern Islands, 
is endowed with a similar formation of tongue. These two 
united groups include some of the birds which exhibit the most 
elongated and the weakest bills in the family : and the deviation 
evinced from the general mode of feeding of the family confirms 
our conjectures that the birds which are distinguished by such 
characters of the bill are the most aberrant in the group ; while 
the birds which possess the opposite characters, viz. strength 
and shortness of bill, are the most typical. It is also to be 
observed, that the next allied group of the Order of Insessores 
which adjoins the Parrots, and to which the two aberrant genera 
at present before us approach most nearly of all that family, is 
distinguished by the tongue entirely superseding the general 
functions of the bill in procuring sustenance. "The partial use 
of the tongue in these two genera of Psittacide, thus affords an 
addition to the numberless beautiful instances in which nature - 
blends together the characters of her conterminous groups. | 
1. Hæ- 
