688 PARROT 
The systematic treatment of this very natural group has long 
been a difficult subject, and almost the only approach to unanimity 
among those who have made it their study, lies in the somewhat 
general belief which has grown up within the last half of this 
century that the Parrots should be regarded as forming a distinct 
Order. <A few systematists, among whom Bonaparte was chief, 
placed them at the top of the Class, conceiving that they were the 
analogues of the Primates among Mammals. Prof. Huxley has 
recognized the Psitlacomorphe as forming one of the principal groups 
of Carinatx, and, by whatever name we call them, that much seems 
to be evident. It will here, however, be unnecessary to discuss the 
rank which the Parrots should hold, and it is quite enough of a 
task to consider the most natural or—if we cannot hope at present 
to reach that—at least the most expedient way of subdividing 
them. It is a reproach to ornithologists that so little satisfactory 
progress has been made in this direction, and the result is all 
the more disheartening, seeing that there is no group of exotic 
birds that affords equal opportunities for anatomical examination, 
since almost every genus extant, and more than two-thirds of the 
species, have within recent times been kept in confinement in 
one or another of our zoological gardens, and at their death have 
furnished subjects for dissection. Yet the laudable attempt of M. 
Blanchard (Compt. Rend. xlii. 1097-1100 and xliv. 518-521) was not 
successful, and it cannot be affirmed that the latest arrangement of 
the Psitiaci is really much more natural than that planned by 
Buffon in 1779.! He was of course unaware of the existence of some 
of the most remarkable forms of the group, in particular of Stringops 
and Nestor ; but he began by making two great divisions of those that 
he did know, separating the Parrots of the Old World from the 
Parrots of the New, and subdividing each of these divisions into 
various sections somewhat in accordance with the names they had 
received in popular language—a practice he followed on many other 
occasions, for he seems to have held a belief that there is more 
truth in the discrimination of the unlearned than the scientific are 
apt to allow. The end was that he produced a plan which is com- 
paratively simple and certainly practical, while as just stated it can- 
not be confidently declared to be unnatural. However, not to go very 
but all trace of it has since been lost, and the only two specimens that exist in 
Museums are at Paris and Vienna respectively—the latter having been obtained 
on the dispersal of the Leverian Museum in 1806, when it formed lot 5828 in the 
sale catalogue, and was there said to be from America! (Cf. Von Pelzeln, Jdis, 
1873, p. 832; A. Milne-Edwards, Ann. Sc. Nat. ser. 5, vi. pl. ii. fig. 4, pl. iii. fig. 
8; the same and Oustalet in the centenary volume of the Museum of Natural 
History at Paris, pp. 7-21, pl. i. ; and W. A. Forbes, Jbis, 1879, pp. 303-307.) 
1 This is virtually admitted by Count T. Salvadori (tom. cit. Introd. p. viil.), 
the latest reviser of the Order. 
