62 THE INFLUENCE OF INANIMATE SUHROUNDINGS. 



brooks. A very interesting example is offered by the Kia 

 Nestor mirabilis of New Zealand ; it is allied to the parrots, 

 and formerly fed on the juices of plants and flowers, but lately 

 it has become accustomed to sipping the blood of newly 

 slaughtered sheep ; and it is asserted that this bird, originally so 

 harmless has actually become a serious foe to the flocks of New 

 Zealand by its constantly increasing love for the blood of sheep, 

 for it even pecks and sips the most minute wounds on a living 

 sheep, and so sets up an irritation which not unfrequently leads 

 to the death of the animal. Dr. Philippi, the best known, 



FIG. IG.Jfeslor mirtidUix, a New Zealand parrot. 



zoologist of the University of Santiago in Chili, has recently com- 

 municated a still more remarkable case. Two horses on the 

 estate of a certain Mr. Nicholas Paulsen, according to him, had 

 for weeks indulged in the bad habit of eating every day some 

 of the young pigeons and chickens in the poultry-yard. 



In the Zoological Institute of Wiirzburg, I have kept ft U P to 

 years a pair of fully grown and perfectly tame prairie dogsj c i es f 

 male, to which I gave the old-fashioned German name of rre( i to 

 differs entirely in his tastes from the female, Gretel. She, in?'* the 

 respect an ornament to her sex, always gentle, unassuming 6 the 

 affectionate, but very timid too, prefers a vegetable diet- nuance 



