^ ° 1912 ] Wright, Early Records of the Carolina Paroquet. 345 



Winter there are great plenty of ... . Parrats,. . . . ". About the 

 same time Wm. Strachey's curious "Histoire of Travaile into 

 Virginia" (1610?-1612?) appears. Of the "Parakitoes," he writes/ 

 " I have seene manie in the winter, and knowe divers killed, yet be 

 they a fowle most swift of wing, their winges and breasts are of a 

 greenish cuUour, with forked tayles, their heads, some crymsen, some 

 yellowe, some orange-tawny, very beautifull. Some of our colonic 

 who have seene of the East Indian parratts, affirme how they are 

 like to that kynd, which hath given us somewhat the more hope 

 of the nerenes of the South Sea, these parratts, by all probability, 

 like enough to come from some of the countryes upon that sea." 

 In 1615, Ralph Hamor in the same region observes ^ " in winter 

 about Christmas many flocks of Parakcrtoihs." 



The same year, 1615, Champlain, when just north of Lake 

 Ontario,^ "lost (his) way in the woods, having followed a certain 

 bird that seemed to (him) peculiar. It had a beak like that of a 

 parrot, and was of the size of a hen. It was entirely yellow except 

 the head which was red, and the wings which were blue, and it 

 flew by intervals like a partridge. The desire to kill it led (him) 

 to pursue it from tree to tree for a very long time, until it flew away 

 in good earnest," — a description which might suggest the paro- 

 quet. It is much later, 1649, in "A Perfect Description of Vir- 

 ginia" that "Parrots" next appear.^ The Jesuit Relations yield 

 four short notes. The Relations of 1661-62 in speaking of Ken- 

 tucky or Tennessee, observe that in the fruit trees,^ " birds of all 

 colors and of every note, especially little Paroquets, which are so 

 numerous that we have seen some of our Iroquois return from those 

 countries with scarfs and belts which they had made from these 

 birds by a process of interweaving," Some ten years later (1673) 

 Dablon finds, on the lower Mississippi, that ^ " Parroquets fly in 

 flocks of 10 to 12." Finally, the "Voyages du P. Jacques Mar- 



1 Hakluyt Soc, London, 1849, p. 126. 



' Hamor, Ralph. A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Vil'ginia, etc. 

 London, 1615. Reprint, Richmond, 1860, p. 21. 



3 Champlain, Voyages of, 1611-1618. Vol. 3. Prince Soc. Publications, Vol. 

 13, 1882, p. 140. 



* Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. Second Ser., Vol. IX, 1822, p. 121. 



'Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. By R. G. Thwaites and others, 

 1896, Vol. 47, p. 147. 



'ibid.. Vol. 58, p. 99. 



