The Parrot Family. 



59 



which they are usually brought over. In the first 

 place, they mostly perform the journey from their 

 native land to this country in the dark and intensely 

 hot hold of a steamship, where they are greatly 

 overcrowded. Their food is thrown on the floor of 

 the box in which they are confined, and they have to 



FIG. 18. THE GREY PARROT. 



pick it up and eat it contaminated with their own 

 droppings, which, amidst the intense heat, soon become 

 putrid, and implant the germs of sure and certain 

 death in the poor prisoners. As a rule, they are 

 given no water, so that their raging thirst compels 

 them to swallow the semi-liquid abominations on the 



