THE PARROT. 103 



morning. It is a curious fact that Parrots do not in their 

 wild state indulge their imitative faculties at all. unlike 

 the clever starling tribe ; and so thousands of generations 

 of them live and die in their native jungles without ever 

 fully exercising ears and tongue fully as acute, in many 

 cases, as our own. I say tongue conventionally, of course, 

 for in Parrots, as in other birds, the tongue has nothing to 

 do with the production of the sounds uttered, human or 

 otherwise; the bird's vocal organ being the. syrinx, which 

 is situated at the base of the windpipe, where that organ 

 forks before entering the lungs. 



I have not seen any other kind of Parrot wild about 

 here, but the large " Rock Parrot " (Palceornis nepalen- 

 sis) is said to occur in that condition, and is at all events 

 such a very common captive as to require notice. In the 

 difference between different sexes and ages, and in its 

 general colour and form it resembles the ordinary Parrot, 

 but it is not only larger, but of a much duller green, and 

 always possesses a splash of red on the wing. Its plumage 

 never seems to incline to yellow like the smaller Parrot' s, 

 although we have in the museum a skin of the very nearly 

 allied Andaman large Parrot ((Palceornis maynirostris) 

 which is nearly a pure " lutino." This Andaman variety 

 chiefly differs in having a very much bigger bill, according 

 to a very general rule in island colonists among birds ; but 

 why an insular habitat should result in a big nose is a 

 problem which science has yet to solve. 



