Vo\-^"] CHISHOLM, The -'Lost" Paradise Parrot. 17 



cerning this bird, hut had not been able to afford them any in- 

 formation, the last specimen received at the Australian Museum 

 (Sydney) being dated 1886. This of a species which John Gould 

 had found tjuite common in N.S.W. in the forties,* and which 

 Diggles, w riting in the sixties, alluded to as "this beautiful but 

 common si)ecies!" Two years later (in 1913), Mr. W. H. 

 Workman, M.B.O.U., wrote to The Eimt,t from Dublin, 

 drawing attention to "the disappearance from the bird- 

 markets during the last twenty years of the beautiful 

 little Turquoisine Parrakeet," and expressing the fear 

 that the species had "gone the way of the Dodo and the 

 Passenger I'igeon." "If our worst fears are realised," added 

 Mr. Workman, "and this little bird has gone for ever, I think it 

 would be of interest to ornithologists all the world over if a 

 short history of the species were published in The Emu." The 

 editors of The Eiuii appraised the question as an important one, 

 and asked members of the R.A.O.U. for notes upon the species, 

 either from past or present experience. There was no response. 

 Two years later appeared A. J. Campbell's incjuiry ("Missing 

 Birds"), to which allusion has been made earlier. Again there 

 w^as no response. All this caused Mathews to write in his big 

 work (vol. 6, p. 549) that the Chestnut-shouldered Parrot was 

 probably extinct, "and of its life history we do not know much." 

 Readers of The Emu will remember that since then (last year, I 

 think) a small company of the Turquoisine Parrots was reported 

 not far from Sydney. I have not heard, however, of any attem])t 

 being made to follow out Workman's suggestion in regard to 

 fostering the breeding of the birds. 



The extinction of a species is an appalling thing. How much 

 more ghastly is the extermination of a genus ! Such a possi- 

 bility confronts us in regard to the Euphema Parrots. Mr. W. 

 B. Alexander, M.A., C.F.A.O.U., tells me he thinks Parrots are 

 failing the world over; but he would be the last to admit that 

 because of that belief we should sit down with folded hands. 

 The idea that such birds must have their day and cease to be 

 can well be left to the trappers and dealers, gentlemen who mix 

 fatalism with finance. The question is, then, what are the orni- 

 thologists of iVustralia going to do about this matter of vanish- 

 ing Parrots? Surely it is a subject well worth}^ the attention 

 of the annual congress of the Union ! Meanwhile, let us, without 

 reflecting on the claims of true science, dispute the dangerous 

 idea that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever in a cage or a cabinet ; 

 and disdain, too, the lop-sided belief that the moving finger of 

 Civilisation must move on over the bodies of "the loveliest and 

 the best" of Nature's children. 



* "All those who have travelled in the 'bush' of New South Wales," says 

 Gould in his Handbook of 1865, "will recognize in this lovely species an old 

 favourite, for it must often have come under their notice." 



t Vol. XII., p. 207. 



