154 CAROLINA PARROT. 



than the state of Maryland; though straggling parties have been 

 occasionally observed among the vallies of the Juniata; and ac- 

 cording to some, even twenty-five miles to the northwest of 

 Albany, in the state of New York. * But such accidental visits 

 furnish no certain criteria by which to judge of their usual ex- 

 tent of range; those aerial voyagers, as well as others who na- 

 vigate the deep, being subject to be cast away, by the violence 

 of the elements, on distant shores and unknown countries. 



From these circumstances of the .northern residence of this 

 species, we might be justified in concluding it to be a very 

 hardy bird, more capable of sustaining cold than nine-tenths of 

 its tribe; and so I believe it is; having myself seen them, in the 

 month of February, along the banks of the Ohio, in a snow 

 storm, flying about like pigeons, and in full cry. 



The preference, however, which this bird gives to the west- 

 ern countries, lying in the same parallel of latitude with those 

 eastward of the Alleghany mountains, which it rarely or never 

 visits, is worthy of remark; and has been adduced, by different 

 writers, as a proof of the superior mildness of climate in the 

 former to that of the latter. But there are other reasons for this 

 partiality equally powerful, though hitherto overlooked; name- 

 ly, certain peculiar features of country, to which these birds 

 are particularly and strongly attached; these are, low, rich, al- 

 luvial bottoms, along the borders of creeks, covered with a 

 gigantic growth of sycamore trees or button-wood deep and 

 almost impenetrable swamps, where the vast and towering cy- 

 press lift their still more majestic heads; and those singular 

 salines, or, as they are usually called, licks, so generally inter- 

 spersed over that country, and which are regularly and eagerly 

 visited by the Paroquets. A still greater inducement is the su- 

 perior abundance of their favourite fruits. That food which the 

 Paroquet prefers to all others, is the seeds of the cockle-burr, 

 a plant rarely found in the lower parts of Pennsylvania, or 

 New York; but which unfortunately grows in too great abund- 



* BARTON'S Fragments, &c. p. 6, Introd. 



