HONEY-EATING PARROTS 85 



them in plumage, being dark dull brown when 

 young, and richly glossed with green and bronze 

 when adult. 



Besides the family of Humming-birds and the 

 various ,honey- sucking groups of Passerines above 

 alluded to, there are honey-sucking Parrots, and 

 in the case of these, too, the honey-sucking habit 

 has evidently originated more than once quite 

 independently. These birds have longer and more 

 protrusible tongues than other Parrots though the 

 difference is not great but they differ in detail. 



In the Lories, which are far the most numerous 

 and best-known of these Parrots, the tongue has 

 the papillae on its end much elongated, so as to 

 form a very short-fibred brush ; in the Nestors, 

 of which only the Kaka or Forest-Parrot of New 

 Zealand (Nestor meridionalis) and the sheep-worry- 

 ing Kea survive, the end of the tongue is plain, but 

 has under it a plate of horn not unlike the human 

 nail, of which the end is split into bristles ; while 

 in the little Bat-Parrots (Loriculus), which are so 

 peculiar in their habit of sleeping upside-down, the 

 tongue is quite ordinary, although they are confirmed 

 honey- eaters. 



It seems curious to find honey-eaters among 

 such a group as the Parrots, with beaks so strongly 

 specialized for cracking and crunching ; and as a 

 matter of fact some at all events of the syrup- 

 sipping forms will eat seed in confinement, crack- 

 ing it in quite the normal way, although too much 

 of such food is said to give them fits. 



