404 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. vii. 



Great. In the Reign of Nero, the Romans became acquainted 

 with other kind from Africa. Pliny describes the present 

 birds with sufficient accuracy to identify it. It is, he says, 

 entirely green, with a red collar on the neck. The Romans kept 

 parrots in cages of silver, tortoise shell and ivory, and had tutors 

 who particularly taught them to utter the name of Caesar ; in 

 those days the price of a parrot that could speak exceeded that 

 of a slave. Ovid is well known to have sung their praises, and 

 Heliogabaius thought he could not set anything more delicate 

 than parrots heads before his guests. '' Oh unhappy Rome," wrote 

 Cato the censor, " have we lived to see the day when our women 

 nurse dogs upon their laps, and our men go about with parrots 

 on their hands ?"' The Indian Lorikeet, of which the specimen 

 exhibited was shot at an elevation of more than 2000 feet above 

 the sea level in the Ncilgherries, has been classed by some writers 

 among the true Parrots. The Parrots proper have short square 

 tails, and their heads are without crests. The Lories and Lori- 

 keets, which inhabit India and the Eastern Archipelago, are by 

 some naturalists, however, regarded as a peculiar group, distinct 

 from any other, and characterized by having the tongue termin- 

 ated with a tuft of glutinous filaments or threads. The Barbets 

 are a small group of climbing birds, so called from the base of 

 the beak being surrounded with stiff hairs or bristles instead of 

 feathers. There are three specimens of the Crimson Breasted or 

 Golden Barbet in the present collection. Respecting this bird 

 Jerdon writes as follows: "This species of barbet is found 

 throughout all India, extending into the Burmese countries, 

 Malayana, Ceylon and the Isles ; according to Adams, it is not 

 met with on the Himalayas or in the Punjaub. This bird is 

 very common where there is a sufficiency of trees, inhabiting 

 open spaces in the jungles, groves of trees, avenues and gardens, 

 being very familiar, and approaching close to houses, and not 

 uufrequently perching on the housetop. As far as I have ob- 

 served, it does not climb like the woodpecker, but hops about 

 the branches like other perching birds. The Rev. Mr. Phillips, 

 however, states that it runs up and down the trees like a wood- 

 pecker, and other observers have asserted that it climbs to its 

 hole ; but I confess I have never seen this, and Mr. Blytli is 

 most decidedly of opinion that barbets never climb. The latter 

 naturalist found that one of these birds which he kept alive 

 would take insects into its mouth and munch them, but swallowed 



