392 birds. 



It is remarkable, that of the different species of parrots that are 

 known and described, there is not one common to the New and the 

 Old World. Something like this is observable also in the case of 

 quadrupeds ; none of those belonging to the tropical regions in 

 the one continent being discoverable in the same latitudes of the 

 other. No animal that is incapable of bearing the rigours of cold 

 is found to pass from the Old to the New World, because it is only 

 in the regions of the north that these are ascertained to approximate. 

 Notwithstanding its attribute of flight, the parrot is incapable of tra- 

 versing that vast space which lies between Africa and the East 

 Indies ; and all the different tribes of this large class remain con- 

 fined to their primitive stations on each hemisphere. So short and 

 heavy indeed are their flights, that they can hardly cross an arm of 

 the sea seven or eight leagues broad ; hence, almost every island in 

 the West Indies is distinguished by a race of parrots peculiar to 

 itself. 



Man has always most admired those animals that seemed to par- 

 ticipate most largely of his own nature. The monkey, by its resem- 

 blance to his external form, and the parrot by imitating his voice, 

 have excited his winder, and been deemed a peculiar and privileged 

 race, destined to fill up the intermediate space between him and the 

 brute creation. Savages, who arc in general so insensible to the 

 grand spectacle of nature, have viewed these animals with astonish- 

 ment and delight. They stop their canoes for hours together, to 

 behold the gesticulations of the monkey ; and they take such plea- 

 sure in taming and educating parrots, that they are said by RufTon 

 to possess the secret of enriching and varying the hue of their plu- 

 mage ; an art to which the more civilized nations of Europe are still 

 strangers. 



The Greeks at first knew only one species of parrot, which was 

 imported from the East by one of the captains of Alexander's fleet. 

 Aristotle, the father of naturalists, speaks of it as a rare bird, of 

 which he had only heard by report. The beauty of parrots, and 

 their faculty of speech, soon made them objects of high request 

 among the luxurious Romans, whom the virtuous Cato justly re- 

 proaches for this puerile attachment. Tn his time, they kept them 

 in cages of silver and of ivory, and bought them at a price as high as 

 that of a slave. Till the time of Nero, however, they knew no 

 other species than the Indian ; when those who ministered to the 

 pleasure'of that extravagant and luxurious emperor, found them in 

 an island far up the river Nile, called Gaganda. 



