314 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



known to be the island of Java, and the Rose-ringed Parrakeet is more probably the bird intended. 

 Professor Sundevall, the great authority on Aristotle, believes that the present bird was the only 

 Parrot known to the ancients, being brought into Europe probably from Nubia. Other species were 

 not seen in Europe before the end of the Middle Ages, and the West African species, such as the 

 Senegal Parrot (P. senegalus), in 1455, and the Grey Parrot even later; the latter not being described 

 before Aldrovaridus, about the year 1600. American species were brought already in 1493 by 

 Christopher Columbus, and many Indian species after the circumnavigation of Africa about the 

 year 1500. The present bird is common in India and Ceylon, and is, moreover, one of the few 



species of birds which are 

 common to the Indian 

 Peninsula and the con- 

 tinent of Africa, as it is 

 a well-known bird in 

 Nubia and Abyssinia, 

 and on one occasion a 

 flock has been seen in the 

 neighbourhood of Port 

 Elizabeth in the extreme 

 south of the continent. 

 According to Dr. Jerdon, 

 it is one of the most 

 common and familiar 

 birds in India, frequent- 

 ing cultivated ground and 

 gardens, even in the 

 barest and least wooded 

 parts of the country, and 

 it is habitually found 

 about towns and villages, 

 constantly perching 011 

 the house-top. It is very 

 destructive to most kinds 

 of grain, as well as to 

 fruit-gardens. Burgess 

 says that they carry off 

 the ears of corn to trees 

 to devour at leisure, and 

 Jerdon has observed the 

 same sometimes. When 

 the grains are cut and 

 housed it feeds on the 



HOSE-RINGED PAKBAKEET. 



ground in the stubble 



cornfields, also in meadows, picking up what seeds it can ; and now and then takes long nights, 

 hunting for any tree that may be in fruit, skimming close and examining every tree ; and when it has 

 made a discovery of one in fruit, circling round, and sailing with outspread and down-pointing wings 

 till it alights on the tree. It associates in flocks of various size, sometimes in vast numbers, and 

 generally many hundreds roost together in some garden or grove. At Saugor all the Parrakeets, 

 Mynahs, Crows, Bee-eaters, &c., of the neighbourhood, for some miles around, roost in company in a 

 large grove of bamboos ; and the deafening noise heard there from before sunset till dark, and from 

 the first dawn of day till long after sunrise, gives to the listener the idea of numberless noisy steam 

 machines at work. Many of the flocks of Parrots are very late in returning, and fly along quite low, 

 skimming the ground, and just rising over a tree, house, or any obstacle in the way, and, for several 

 nights in succession, several Parrakeets flew against the wall of a house, on the top of a hill in 



