INTRODUCTION, 



what way caged parrots be fed ; rather have many years of 

 experience fixed certain rules according to which nourishment 

 must be given. Every transgression of the principles which I 

 shall further lay down on this head, in the chapter about 

 "Food," will be severely visited by the sickness, or even loss, 

 of more or less valuable birds. First, we must notice that all 

 parrots feed chiefly upon plants, upon fruits, seeds, blossoms, 

 shoots, or other soft and delicate parts of vegetable growths. 

 Many — for instance, the smaller species — need animal food for 

 their own support and the rearing of their young, and thus 

 probably devour insects when in freedom. 



All parrots are very destructive, for they gnaw and mangle 

 much more than they need for food. They may, therefore, 

 cause extraordinary damage to useful plants. They are on 

 this account exposed to frequent pursuit wherever they appear 

 in large flights, or at all numerously. Moreover, they are killed 

 for use ; as, for example, for the plumage as an ornament, or for 

 all kinds of feather work ; also to prepare the whole skin for 

 collections. And, finally, many parrots are eaten as game. 



The fancy for speaking parrots is known to be very ancient. 

 In all parts of the world, when Europeans first entered into 

 communication with the natives, they found the latter had 

 tame parrots — in India, in the islands of the Malay 

 Archipelago, in America, and in Australia. When the dis- 

 coverers of America landed in the New World, the Indians 

 came to meet them with large tame macaws. In the villages 

 in Guiana one never sees children playing about without 

 parrots and monkeys with them ; and in Africa one finds 

 round the huts of the negroes many Grey Parrots, which have 

 been taken while young from the nests, reared by hand, and 

 which now climb about on the straw roofs and trees with 

 clipped wings. A popular superstition there says that there 

 is so much heat in the nest of a Jaco that whoever thrusts his 

 hand into it will be burnt, and that the white spots which 

 many negroes have upon their hands have been caused by 

 such indiscreet attempts. These marks, however, are the result 

 of skin disease, and the whole fable has been invented merely 

 for the purpose of frightening away others from plun- 

 dering the parrots' nests — invented, that is to say, by those 

 who themselves carry on this business. In South America, in 

 the present day, the immense trees in which the large and 

 splendid macaws build their nests are regarded as family 



