THE UNDULATED GRASS PAREAKEET. 251 



In my small book, the "Undulated Grass Parrakeet" (Creutz, 

 Magdeburg), full directions will be found for the purchase, 

 management, breeding, and valuation of this species. It may be 

 further remarked that the food is just the same as that directed 

 on page 238 for the Platycerci. Single birds are best fed on 

 canary seed, unshelled millet, and raw oats, with the addition 

 of a little green food and ears of corn or grass. 



Just as the canary needed a comparatively long space of time 

 for its complete naturalisation among us ; and again, as we are 

 not really able to determine with exactness when the change 

 from the greenish-grey plumage of the wild bird to the light 

 yellow of the cultivated bird took place, or whether, indeed, 

 several centuries were required to bring it about — in the same 

 way the Grass Parrakeet shows itself to be peculiarly subject to 

 the influences of development in breeding. Less than fifty 

 years have sufficed for it to appear before us, not only in varieties 

 of colouring, but also as a speaker. From the original variety 

 we bred a yellowish-green, next a pure yellow was produced, and 

 afterwards a white variety — the two latter had red eyes. 

 Eventually a blue specimen was generated. Surely, no other 

 bird has proved so readily subject to the influences of man in 

 development by breeding. 



The principal attraction of the Grass Parrakeet for the readers 

 of this book is, of course, its talent for speech. It is not really 

 astonishing that the Undulated Grass Parrakeet should display a 

 faculty for talking, belonging, as it does, to the Parrot family, 

 and hence to those birds which, as this work abundantly proves, 

 take a much higher rank than others. But when we consider 

 that, though by no means the smallest of the parrots, it is 

 one of the most diminutive imported alive ; and that, with its 

 droll charming ways, its rapid movements, &c., it does not at all 

 give the impression of a highly talented bird, then, indeed, its 

 great aptitude for speech becomes somewhat surprising. 



Miss Eugenie Maier, of Stuttgart, was, in 1877, the first to 

 give an account of a talker of this species. Her young Grass 

 Parrakeet, which had not yet acquired its adult plumage, picked 

 up some lovely notes from the song of a Japanese robin. " It 

 was very tame, and at a call would fly to my shoulder or my 

 hand. Then it learnt the trumpet notes of a pair of zebra 

 finches, and forgot the call of the robin. I therefore sent the 

 finches away, so that ' Misse ' — as I named the parrakeet — had 

 no intercourse with other birds, and soon it also foro:ot the 



