ShUFKI-DI- : OSTKOLOCY <^I' THK Psll lACI. 403 



any rate it would scfin advisable to keep them in a single I'amily 

 Fsittacidu', hut there can he no ohjeetion to separating them into sev- 

 eral subflimilies. The Cockatoos, for instance, can he without much 

 diftiiulty detuied, and may stand as Cacatui/ue, and then the hrush- 

 tongued Lories as Loriiihc, alter which the Macaws, Ariiuc — including 

 possihly Coiuinis and its allies." 



^^ PlatyCi-rcus -xxmX its neighbors may form another section, and the 

 same with the Pa/ccor/iis ; hut for the rest there is not yet material for 

 arriving at any determination, though Chrysotis and Psittacus seem to 

 furnish two different ty])es, to the former of which Psittaciila appears to 

 hear much the same relation as Ai::;apornis does to the latter. Amongst 

 the genera C/irysofis, Paheoniis, tx.w^ Psittacus are prohahly to he found 

 the most highly organized forms, and it is these lairds in which the 

 faculty of so-called ' speech ' reaches its maximum development. But 

 too much importance must not he assigned to that fact ; since, while 

 Psittacus critliacus — the well-known (jrey Parrot with a red tail — is 

 the most accomplished spokesman of the whole group, it is fairly ap- 

 proached hy some species of Chrysotis — usually styled Amazons — and 

 yet its congener P. timnch is not known to Ije at all lociuacious. " '^ 



With respect to the relation of the Psittaci to the Raptorial Birds, 

 Professor Newton has said, " That the St/'i,i:^cs stand ([uite independently 

 of the Accipitrcs as ahove limited can hardly he douhted, and, while 

 the Psittaci or Parrots would on some grounds appear to he the nearest 

 allies of the Accipitrcs, the nearest relations of the Owls must be looked 

 for in the multifarious group Picarice " (/ac. cit., Art. " Ornithology," 



P- 47)- 



In his invaluable and recent work "A Hand-List of the Genera 

 and Species of Birds," Doctor R. Bowdler considers all the members 

 of this group as forming an Order (XXVIIl) — the Psittacifor.mes 

 — which he places between the Strigiformes (Order XXVI 

 [XX\'1I?]) and the Coraciiformes (Order XXIX), the latter start- 

 ing in with the family Stcatoruit/iidce without giving the actual number 

 of the known species of this great host of birds as enumerated by 

 this distinguished ornithologist. I w^ould suppose that his scheme of 

 classification for them is as follows : 



5\ewton, Alfred. Art. "Parrot," Eiicycl. Brit., 9th ed.. Vol. Will, p. 323 

 (1885). 



