SO PARROTS. 



cage hand over hand, or rather, foot over foot : hence 

 the name, Climbers. Except this peculiarity in the 

 form of the foot, Parrots have little in common with 

 Woodpeckers or Cuckoos, and in all modern systems 

 they are widely separated, being, as I have already 

 said, ranked in an order by themselves and placed 

 near the Owls. They have proportionally a larger 

 brain than almost any other birds, and the tongue, 

 which is thick and fleshy, is endowed with a very 

 discriminating sense of taste. They have also, as a 

 rule, a fine ear. The short, curved, bill is partly 

 covered with a cere cf bare skin, a feature in which 

 they resemble the birds of prey. 



India possesses a good many representatives of the 

 family, but, with a single exception, they all belong to 

 one division of it, namely, the Parrakeets, which 

 are green birds of moderate size, with long tails. 

 Cockatoos, Macaws, true Parrots, Lories, are all 

 absent from India. And of the Parrakeets, only 

 one, the Rose-ringed, or Common, Parrakeet, makes 

 its home in Bombay. I was once told by a gentle- 

 man, whose memory must have gone back to the 

 early fifties, that even this was a recent settler. 

 He said that when he came to Bombay there were 

 no Parrots. Statements of this kind, except from 

 very careful observers, must be received with caution, 

 but it is not impossible that the wild Parrots, 

 which now swarm about Malabar Hill, are for the most 

 part descendants of escaped prisoners. For Bombay 

 has long been a veritable Botany Bay to this perse- 

 cuted race. Hundreds upon hundreds every 

 season are drafted from the mainland to the great 

 slave mart in the Crawford Market, crowded together 



