362 Wright, Early Records of the Carolina Paroquet. [july 



flocks of which inhabited the forests." Our last note comes Feb. 

 19-24, 1855, when Hon. A. M. Murray ^ "saw" at Palatka?, Fla., 

 "several little green paroquets with yellow heads, the only kind 

 of parrot common to Florida," — the only region where it was 

 definitely known to exist 40 years later (1895). 



In 1892, A. W. Butler in his valuable "Notes on the Range and 

 Habits of the Carolina Parrakeet" ^ summarizes the stages of its 

 gradual restriction of range as follows: "From the evidence here 

 presented it seems that they had disappeared almost wholly from 

 Ohio and from Indiana, save the southwestern portion, by some 

 time between 1835 and 1840, and that they left Indiana about 

 1858. So far as I know, there is but one record of the recurrence 

 of the species in the region thus vacated. The late Dr. J. M. 

 Wheaton gives, upon what he considers good authority, an account 

 of a flock of twenty-five or thirty individuals at Columbus, Ohio, 

 in July, 1862. Within about thirty years from the time first 

 referred to by Audubon the species had entirely disappeared from 

 a territory south of a line drawn, from Chicago, 111., to Albany, 

 N. Y., to, approximately, a line drawn from some point in Virginia, 

 or perhaps North Carolina, to the lower Wabash Valley. In the 

 next forty-five years they disappeared from southwestern Indiana, 

 Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Kentucky, most of 

 Missouri, and from the immediate vicinity of the Mississippi River, 

 also from the States of the Atlantic coast as far south as Florida. 

 The steady contraction of occupied area still continues. They are 

 now perhaps found in but a few restricted localities. In the 

 southern part of Florida they are still to be found in some numbers. 

 Perhaps a small area in the interior of some of the Gulf States may 

 still be occupied by them. Besides there is an area, whose limits 

 are undefined, in Indian Territory, extending probably into Texas 

 and possibly into Arkansas and Missouri, where Parrakeets are 

 said to be found still. It is but natural to think that the extinction 

 of these birds is but a question of a few years." In conclusion, 

 he says, " All facts concerning their former distribution and their 

 habits as noted when they ranged north of the Ohio River, are 



1 Murray, A. M. Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada. 2 vols, 

 in one. N. Y., 1856, p. 228. 



2 ' The Auk '. IX, Jan., 1892, pp. 49-56. 



