Hums or INDIANA. 821 



It is always difficult i'or tliosc who have not seen, a part of the 

 changes that the last century has wrought in the Ohio Valley and Lake 

 Region to comprehend what has occurred. The Paroquets were found 

 there in great numbers. Dr. Rufus Haymond, who wrote the first 

 record of their occurrence in the interior of Indiana, in 1856, said: 

 "This bird was formerly very numerous along the Whitewater River. 

 Several years have elapsed since any of them have been seen." Proc. 

 Phil. Acad., November, 1856, p. 293.) Wilson found them in 1810, 

 in flocks, near Lawrenceburg, and in great numbers at the Big Bone 

 Lick, in Kentucky, but a few miles away. When my father was a 

 boy, six or eight years old, about 1816-18, they were common about 

 Brookville. They were quite numerous in Morgan County in 1835-40. 

 Prof. E. T. Cox informs me that they were as numerous about New 

 Harmony in 1826 as Blackbirds (Quiscalus quiscula ceneus) are now. 

 Several others have given the same estimate of their numbers. 



Another authority says they alighted upon an apple tree in such 

 numbers as to almost cover it over. They flew in two lines converging 

 to a point, in form resembling the figure made by a flock of Wild Geese 

 (B. canadensis). While on the wing they chatter and cry continually. 

 This cry sounds like qui, with rising inflection on the i. This is re- 

 peated several times, the last one being drawn out like qui-i-i-i (Nehrl- 

 ing, N. A. B., XVI, p. 439). 



The older people all claim they roosted and nested in cavities, nat- 

 ural or otherwise, in trees. Prof. John Collett has supplied me with 

 the following note: "In 1842, Return Richmond, of Lodi (Parke 

 County), Ind., cut down, in the cold weather of winter, a sycamore 

 tree .some four feet in diameter. In its hollow^trunk he found hun-- 

 dreds of Parakeets in a quiescent or semi-torpid condition. The 

 weather was too cold for the birds to fly or even to make any exertion 

 to escape. Mr. Richmond cut off with his saw a section of the hollow 

 trunk some five feet long, cut out a doorw r ay one foot by two in size, 

 nailed over it a wire screen of his fanning mill, rolled this cumbersome 

 cage into the house and placed in it a dozen of the birds. They soon 

 began to enjoy the feed of fruit, huckleberries and nuts he gave them, 

 and he had the pleasure of settling absolutely the disputed question 

 of how they slept. At night they never rested on a perch, but sus- 

 pended themselves by their beaks, and with their feet on the side of 

 their cage. This was repeated night after night during their cap- 

 tivity." 



Mr. W. B. Seward, of Bloomington, informs me of obtaining some 

 five, he thinks, young Paroquets from a farmer's boy in Owen County, 

 in 1845. His impression is they were taken from the inside of a hoi- 



