381 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
Acclimatization of Parrots at Northrepps Hall, Norfolk. 
[At the recent Meeting of the British Association, the Members, 
among other invitations, were invited to pay a visit to Northrepps 
Hall, the residence of the Dowager Lady Buxton. While partaking 
of the hospitality provided by the accomplished hostess, the guests 
were delighted and astonished by the parrots that darted in and 
out among the trees or flew over their heads across the lawn, their 
brilhant plumage glancing in the radiance of the setting sun. After 
tea, Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P., read the following paper. We are 
sorry to learn that these birds, which at one time amounted to 
nearly fifty, have been reduced now to some twenty-four, owing 
to the vicious propensity of gamekeepers and so-called sportsmen to 
wantonly destroy every stranger that may come across them. ] 
I wave undertaken to tell you a little about the experiment that 
has been tried here of letting parrots fly wild about the place; but 
though it has been a source of great interest and amusement to us, 
I much fear that there is very little to relate that could be thought 
worthy of the attention, even in their holiday moments, of an 
Association for the Advancement of Science. Nor can I honestly 
say that the attempt to acclimatize these birds (that is to say, to 
establish them as an addition to our English fauna) has in that 
respect been attended by success. It is true that they have several 
times made nests, and on five of these occasions the young have 
been brought to maturity; and were it not ‘for those vile guns,” 
the birds would flourish extremely; for illness and death from 
natural causes would seem to be almost unknown among them. 
But, unhappily, they share in many of the characteristics of human 
nature, and in this one, above all, that they do not know when they 
are well off, and every now and then they are seized with a desire 
to see the world, and take flights to a distance, twelve or fifteen 
miles perhaps, and sometimes much more ; and then they are almost 
sure to fall a prey to some gamekeeper or lad who is keeping crows, 
and who is astonished by seeing these brilliant apparitions among 
the trees. As regards their breeding, a pair of cockatoos led the 
way by most unsuccessfully attempting to make a nest in one of the 
chimneys; before it was half finished it gave way, and the nest 
and cockatoos fell to the bottom. It being summer time, they were 
only discovered after spending a day and a night among the soot, 
and when they were brought out they looked like two dwarf chimney 
sweeps. ‘They persevered, however, and made another nest in one 
of the boxes that had been hung against the gables of the house in 
hopes of such an event. They laid two eggs; but though the hen 
cockatoo sat most perseveringly till September, it was all in vain— 
the eggs were addled. Afterwards a pair of green parrots, a cock 
of the Amazonian and a hen of the Honduras breed, made a nest in 
one of the boxes, and brought up a young one; but when he was 
