PARROT 685 



concerned had any knowledge of it. Aristotle is commonly sup- 

 posed to be the first author who mentions a Parrot ; but this is an 

 error, for nearly a century earlier Ctesias in his Indica, (cap. 3), 1 under 

 the name of /Sn-ra/cos (Bittacus), so neatly described a bird which 

 could speak an " Indian " language naturally, as he seems to have 

 thought or Greek if it had been taught so to do, about as big 

 as a Sparrow-Hawk (Hierax), with a purple face and a black beard, 

 otherwise blue-green (cyaneus) and vermilion in colour, so that there 

 cannot be much risk in declaring that he must have had before him 

 a male example of what is now commonly known as the Blossom- 

 headed Parakeet, and to ornithologists as Palseornis cyanocephahis, an 

 inhabitant of many parts of India. Much ingenuity has been exer- 

 cised in the endeavour to find the word whence this, and the later 

 form of the Greek name, was derived, but to little or no purpose. 

 After Ctesias comes Aristotle's i/sirraur) (Psittace), which Sundevall 

 supposes him to have described only from hearsay ; but this matters 

 little, for there can be no doubt that the Indian conquests of Alex- 

 ander were the means of making the Parrot better known in Europe, 

 and it is in reference to this fact that another Eastern species of 

 Palazornis now bears the name of P. alexandri, though from the 

 localities it inhabits it could not have had anything to do with the 

 Macedonian king. That Africa had Parrots does not seem to have 

 been discovered by the ancients till long after, as Pliny tells us 

 (vi. 29) that they were first met with by explorers employed by 

 Nero beyond the limits of Upper Egypt. These birds, highly 

 prized from the first, reprobated by the moralist, and celebrated by 

 more than one classical poet, as time went on were brought in great 

 numbers to Rome, and ministered in various ways to the luxury of 

 the age. Not only were they lodged in cages of tortoise-shell and 

 ivory, with silver wires, but they were professedly esteemed as 

 delicacies for the table, and one emperor is said to have fed his 

 lions upon them ! But there would be little use in dwelling longer 

 on these topics. With the decline of the Roman empire the demand 

 for Parrots in Europe lessened, and so the supply dwindled, yet all 

 knowledge of them was not wholly lost, and they are occasionally 

 mentioned by one writer or another until in the fifteenth century 

 began that career of geographical discovery which has since pro- 

 ceeded uninterruptedly. This immediately brought with it the 

 knowledge of many more forms of these birds than had ever before 

 been seen, for whatever races of men were visited by European 

 navigators whether in the East Indies or the West, whether in 

 Africa or in .the islands of the Pacific it was almost invariably 

 found that even the most savage tribes had tamed some kind of 

 Parrot ; and, moreover, experience soon shewed that no bird was 

 1 The passage seems to have escaped the notice of all naturalists until Broderip 

 mentioned it in his article " Psittacidae " in the Penny Cyclopaedia (xix. p. 83). 



