82 PRETTY POLL. 



upon palm-nuts, bananas, mangoes, and guavas, but he 

 is by no means averse, if opportunity offers, to the 

 Indian corn of the industrious native. His wife 

 accompanies him in his solitary rambles, for they are not 

 gregarious. In her native haunts, indeed, Polly is an 

 unsociable bird. It is only in confinement that her 

 finer qualities come out, and that she develops into a 

 speech-maker of distinguished attainments. 



A very peculiar and exceptional offshoot of the parrot 

 group is the brush-tongued lory, several species of which 

 are common in Australia, India, and the Molucca 

 Islands. These pretty and interesting creatures are in 

 point of fact parrots which have practically made them- 

 selves into humming-birds by long continuance in the 

 poetical habit of visiting flowers for food. Like Mr. 

 Oscar Wilde in his aesthetic days, they breakfast off a 

 lily. Flitting about from tree to tree with great rapidity, 

 they thrust their long extensible tongues, pencilled with 

 honey-gathering hairs, into the tubes of many big tropical 

 blossoms. The lories, indeed, live entirely on nectar, 

 and they are so common in the region they have made 

 their own that all the larger flowers there have b^on 

 developed with a special view to their tastes and habits, 

 as well as to the structure of their peculiar brush-like 

 honey-collector. In most parrots the mouth is dry 

 and the tongue horny ; but in the lories it is moist and 

 much more like the same organ in the humming-birds and 

 sun-birds. The prevalence of very large and brilliantly 

 coloured flowers in the Malayan region must be set down 

 for the most part to the selective action of these aesthetic 

 and colour-loving little brush-tongued parrots. 



