L TUS-BIRD—LO VE-BIRD 5 2 1 



Chalcopsittacus, and their near allies belonging to the so-called 

 Family of Trichoglossidse, or " Brush-tongued " Parrots, more 

 correctly termed, as by Count T. Salvadori, Loriidx. Garrod, 

 however, in the course of his investigations on the anatomy of the 

 FsiUaci was led to attach little importance to the structure 

 indicated by the epithet "brush-tongued," stating (Froc. Zool. Soc. 

 1874, p. 597) that it "is only an excessive development of the 

 papillae which are always found on the lingual surface." The birds 

 of this group are very characteristic of the Papuan Subregion,^ in 

 which occur, according to Count T. Salvadori, ten species of Lorius, 

 twelve of Eos, and seven of Chalcopsittacus ; but none seem here to 

 require any further notice, ^ though among them, and particularly 

 in the genus JEos, are included some of the most richly-coloured 

 birds to be found in the whole world ; nor does it appear that 

 more need be said of the so-called Lorikeets. 



LOTUS-BIED, the name given in Queensland to the Australian 

 Jacana or Parra, Hydralector cristatus. 



LOVE - BIRD, a name indefinitely bestowed, chiefly by 

 dealers in live animals and their customers, on some of the 

 smaller short-tailed Parrots, from the remarkable affection which 

 examples of opposite sexes exhibit towards each other, an affection 

 popularly believed to be so great that of a pair that have been kept 

 together in captivity neither can long survive the loss of its 

 partner. By many systematic ornithologists the little birds thus 

 named, brought almost entirely from Africa and South America, 

 have been retained in a single genus, Fsittacula, though those 

 belonging to the former country were by others separated as 

 Agapornis. This separation, however, was by no means generally 

 approved, and indeed it was not easily justified, until Garrod (Froc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1874, p. 593) assigned good anatomical ground, afforded 

 by the structure of the carotid artery, for regarding the two 

 groups as distinct, and thus removed what had seemed to be the 

 almost unintelligible puzzle presented by the geographical distribu- 

 tion of the species of Fsittacula in a large sense, though Prof. 

 Huxley (op. cit. 1868, p. 319) had indeed already suggested one 

 way of meeting the difficulty. Nine species of Psittacida are 

 recognized by Count T. Salvadori {Cat. B. Br. Mus. xx. pp. 240- 

 252), who places them in his subfamily Conurinx, while he assigns 

 Urochroma, often considered to be nearly allied, to another sub- 

 family Fioninse — but all these inhabit the New World. On the 

 other hand, all the seven species of Agapornis, which he admits, 

 belong to the Ethiopian Region, and all but one, A. cana (which 



^ They extend, however, to Fiji, Tahiti, and Fanning Island. 

 - Unless it be Oreopsittacus ar/aJci, of New Guinea, remarkable as the only 

 Parrot known as yet to have fourteen instead of twelve rectrices. 



