256 CHAPTERS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 



stood in the way of his success. Either the cat could not be se- 

 cured at the time, or the paroquet had not been feeding upon 

 cockleburs, or something else of the kind. After a long talk 

 upon the subject he closes by saying, " Since the foregoing was 

 written, I have had an opportunity, by the death of a tame Caro- 

 lina paroquet, to ascertain the fact of the poisonous effects of 

 their head and intestines on cats. Having shut up a cat and her 

 two kittens, the latter only a few days old, in a room with the 

 head, neck, and whole intestines of the Paroquet, I found, on the 

 next morning, the whole eaten, except a small part of the bill. 

 The cat exhibited no symptom of sickness; and, at this moment, 

 three days after the experiment has been made, she and her 

 kittens are in their usual health. Still, however, the effect might 

 have been different had the daily food of the bird been cockle- 

 burs instead of Indian corn." From this, I think it is clear that 

 Wilson never did quite satisfy himself upon this point, or if he 

 did, he never published the fact. He did seem to prove, how- 

 ever, that while using their feet in feeding, some of these birds 

 were naturally left-footed, as it were, as others were invariably 

 right-footed. 



Bendire, in his Life Histories of North American Birds, has left 

 us an excellent contribution to the natural history of this species. 

 In that account we read that formerly when the birds were ex- 

 tremely abundant in Florida, a reliable observer there " used to 

 find them breeding in large colonies in the cypress swamps. Sev- 

 eral of these colonies contained at least a thousand birds each. 

 They nested invariably in small cypress trees, the favorite posi- 

 tion being on a fork near the end of a slender branch. Every 

 such fork would be occupied, and he has seen as many as forty 

 or fifty nests in one small tree. Their nests closely resembled 

 those of the Carolina dove, being similarly composed of cypress 

 twigs put together so loosely that the eggs were often visible 

 from the ground beneath. The twigs of the cypress seemed to 

 be preferred to those of any other kind of tree. The height at 

 which the nests were placed varied from 5 or 6 feet to 20 or 30 

 feet." 



The eggs were described by this observer " as being of a green- 

 ish-white color, unspotted. He did not remember the maximum 

 number which he had found in one set, but thought it was at 

 least four or five. He had often taken young birds from the 

 nests to rear or to give to his friends." To this Bendire adds the 



