188 MATESHIP WITH BIRDS 



sponse. Two years later appeared Mr. A. J. Camp- 

 bell's inquiry ("Missing Birds") , to which allusion 

 has been made earlier. Again there was no re- 

 sponse. All this caused Mr. Mathews to write in his 

 big work that the Chestnut-shouldered Parrot was 

 probably extinct, "and of its life history we do not 

 know much." Since then (in 1921, I think) a small 

 company of the Turquoisine Parrots was reported 

 not far from Sydney. I have not heard, however, of 

 any attempt being made to follow out Workman's 

 suggestion in regard to fostering the breeding of the 

 birds. 



The extinction of a species is a ghastly thing. 

 How much more appalling is the extermination of a 

 genus! Such a position confronts us in respect of 

 the Euphema birds and other small Grass Parrots 

 of Australia. Mr. W. B. Alexander, M.A., an orni- 

 thologist of wide experience, tells me he thinks Par- 

 rots are failing the world over ; but he would be the 

 last to admit that because of that belief we should 

 sit down with folded hands. The idea that such 

 birds must have their day and cease to be can well 

 be left to the trappers and dealers, gentlemen who 

 mix fatalism with finance. 



The question arises, then, what are the bird-lovers 

 of Australia going to do about this matter of 

 vanishing Parrots? Surely it is a subject worthy 

 the closest attention of all good Australians ! Mean- 

 while, let us, without reflecting on the claims of true 

 science, dispute the dangerous idea that a thing of 

 beauty is a joy for ever in a cage or a cabinet; and 

 disdain, too, the lopsided belief that the moving fin- 

 ger of Civilisation must move on over the bodies of 

 "the loveliest and the best" of Nature's children. 



