410 



PARROT. 



wader. But farther observation must be made, before 

 anything can be known respecting it. It clearly 

 belongs, however, to the strong-billeddivision of the 

 parrot family, and to those whose general habit is 

 climbing. The breast, the upper parts, the wings, and 

 the tail, with the exception of the coverts, are black ; 

 and the greater part of the wing coverts, the upper 

 and under coverts of the tail, and the rest of the upper 

 parts, are crimson. The bird is well furnished for 

 flight both in the wings and the tail ; and it differs so 

 much from the mere typical parrots, that a knowledge 

 of its habits would be very desirable. 



There still remains a beautiful and highly interesting 

 division of the parrot family, more delicate in struc- 

 ture, and also in feeding, than those which have been 

 hitherto mentioned. This division comprises all those 

 birds which are usually known by the name of 



LORIES. The birds of this division are all natives 

 of the east ; and many of them are birds of great 

 beauty and highly interesting manners. They are, 

 however, more delicate in their nature than the mac- 

 caws, parakeets, and parrots ; and, therefore, though 

 they are abundant in their native 'countries, there is 

 some difficulty in bringing them alive to Europe ; 

 and a good deal of care is necessary in order to keep 

 them alive after they are brought. The name " lory," 

 by which the whole are popularly designated, is, like 

 the word "cockatoo," the call note of some of the 

 species ; though neither the one nor the other is 

 the call-note of all the birds of which it has become 

 the name. 



The members of this division are inhabitants of the 

 south-east of Asia, the Oriental Isles, and New Hol- 

 land ; and it has sometimes been proposed to subdivide 

 them into Lories and Lorikeets applying the former 

 name to those in which the prevailing colour is red, and 

 the latter to those in which it is green. It does 

 not appear that much distinction of character would 

 follow this distinction of colour ; and, therefore, it is 

 of iittle practical use, though there is a sort of geo- 

 graphical distinction between them ; the red ones in- 

 habiting nearer India, and the green and variegated 

 ones more toward Australia, and the remote islands 

 of the Pacific, some of them being found as.far to the 

 eastward as the Sandwich Islands. 



They are all climbing birds, and have the feet as 

 well adapted for that purpose as any of the parrot 

 family. They differ considerably in their bill, how- 

 ever ; and they all, in a great measure, agree with 

 each other in those particulars in which they so dif- 

 fer from the rest. The bill is still much hooked in 

 the upper mandible, and arched in the ridge of the 

 lower one ; so that any one who sees it, in any one 

 of the species, would at once pronounce it to be a 

 parrot's bill. It is, however, much smaller and feebler 

 in proportion than the bill of a parrot ; and the 

 form of its acting surfaces points it out as adapted for 

 a less severe kind of work. It is never toothed, 

 scarcely ever margined, and the inside of the hook on 

 the upper mandible has not the rough and file-like 

 character of that of the nut-cracking parrots. The 

 strong palatal ridges, which serve as a base of resist- 

 ance, ngainst which the lower mandible acts when com- 

 pressing a large nut, are also wanting ; and the whole 

 structure of the organ points out that the lories could 

 not by possibility subsist in the same manner as what 

 one may with propriety call the " hard-mouthed par- 

 rots." There is a difference also in the tongue. 

 With the exception of the microglossi, the precise use 



of whose very peculiar tongue is, as we have said, nol 

 known, the whole of the hard-mouthed parrots, bv 

 what name soever they may be called, have the 

 tongue full and smooth at the point, and they use it with 

 great dexterity in keeping the food against those 

 parts of the bill which can divest it of its hard 

 covering. The tongue of the lories, on the othei 

 hand, is slender, soft in its consistency, more or less 

 covered w ith projecting papillae, and sometimes those 

 papillae form an absolute brush at its extremity. We 

 find the tongue similar to this in those birds of a dif- 

 ferent order, which sip or suck the nectar or honey 

 of flowers ; and we naturally conclude that such, in 

 part, is the use of this structure of tongues in the 

 lories. The honey of flowers, and the sweet juices 

 of pulpy fruits are the substances upon which the 

 lories feed ; and the countries which they inhabit 

 abound greatly in such substances. The mango, the 

 mangostcen, the banana, and a countless number ol 

 others, grow in great profusion in forests of the Orien- 

 tal Isles, and furnish the beautiful birds of this sec 

 tion with an ample supply of food, so that they leave 

 the kernels of fruits to the hard-mouthed tribes, and 

 'very rarely, if ever, attempt breaking the shell of a 

 nut. The Australian ones fare somewhat differently 

 for Australia naturally furnishes scarcely one pulpy 

 fruit ; and, therefore, the birds of this division, which 

 inhabit there, subsist chiefly upon the nectar ol 

 flowers, and have the extremities of their tongues 

 fringed with longer papillae than the birds of the 

 eastern isles. 



The beauty and elegance of this section of the 

 parrot family, their geographical distribution, and the 

 peculiar office which they perform in nature, all tend 

 to give them a high degree of interest ; and we re- 

 gret that the space to which we are restricted wil 

 not allow us to enter into the details of their charac- 

 ters, either general or particular. We may hint 

 however, that, in the tails and general forms of the 

 lories, there are resemblances to several of the divi 

 sions of those parrots which eat hard fruits. Some 

 of those which have been denominated lorikeets beai 

 a slight resemblance to the maccaw family ; others 

 have the tail short and the body thick, more resem- 

 bling the common parrots ; and there are also some 

 which have the body slender, and the two middle 

 feathers of the tail much longer than the others, ir 

 the same manner as the arrow-tailed parakeets ; noi 

 are there wanting some, which, in size and in the gene- 

 ral form of the body, and even in the colours, have 

 no inconsiderable similarity to the " love-birds.' 

 Under all those shades of difference among themselves 

 and of agreement with different sections of the nut- 

 breaking and kernel-eating divisions, they are still, 

 however, constant to their essential character, namely, 

 that which determines the nature of their food ; and 

 we should, perhaps, make as rational a popular dis- 

 tinction as- any, if we considered the birds already 

 described as strong-billed parrots, and the lories and 

 their allied races as weak-billed ones. We must, 

 however, close our general remarks, and proceed to 

 mention a few of the species. 



P,urple~caped Lory (P. domicelln}. This is a very 

 beautiful bird, one of the most typical of the true 

 lories, or those which have a general resemblance in 

 form to the characteristic short-tailed parrots. There 

 is a wide distinction in the body plumage, however, 

 to which it is desirable, and even necessary, to attend. 

 The plumage of the parrots is all over firm and scaly, 



