Widmann — A Preliminary Catalog of the Birds of Missouri. 115 



Missouri in 1854, Paroquets were still plentiful in some localities. 

 April 27, 1854, he writes at Boonville: ''Went on the river bot- 

 tom ; got one Parrakeet." At Chillicothe, May 16, 1854 : " Went 

 on the extensive bottoms of Grand River, so celebrated for rich 

 land and heavy timber; we found the principal forest trees to 

 be black walnut, burr oak, cottonwood, sycamore, hackberry, 

 shagbark hickory, pecan, coffee bean, honey locust and black 



birch, all of which grow to an unusually large size 



Parrakeets are abundant about the large sycamores, Platanus 

 occidentalis, in the hollows of which they roost and nest." Mr. 

 Chas. K. Worthen writes that about 1855 a flock of Paroquets 

 was seen on Fox Island in the Mississippi River by his brother. 

 Mr. H. C. Masters of Atchison, Kan., an early settler of western 

 Missouri, says that when he located at latan, Platte Co., Mo., 

 in the early fifties, there were hundreds of Paroquets in the Mis- 

 souri River bottom. F. V. Hayden, in his report on the Geology 

 and Natural History of the Upper Missouri, says of the Paro- 

 quets: ''Very abundant in the Mississippi Valley along thickly 

 wooded bottoms as far up the Missouri River as Fort Leaven- 

 worth, possibly as high as the mouth of the Platte, but never 

 seen above that point." That was from 1855 to 1857. Hon. 

 J. R. Meade of Wichita, Kan., relates that when he started from 

 Leavenworth over the old wagon trail to Lawrence in the spring 

 of 1859, the beautiful scenery was varied by flocks of gaily- 

 feathered Paroquets, chattering in the tree-tops. With the end 

 of the fifties records of occurrence all at once cease, though we 

 read in Goss' "Birds of Kansas" that as late as spring, 1858, 

 " a small flock reared their young in a large hollow Umb of a giant 

 sycamore tree, on the banks of the Neosho River near Neosho 

 Falls." Captain Bendire frequently saw flocks in the fall and 

 winter, 1860-61, at Fort Smith, Ark., but in Missouri flocks of 

 Paroquets seem to have faded away with the fifties. From 

 that time they became rarer and rarer. Dr. A. F. Eimbeck saw 

 the last November 3, 1867, in Warren Co., seven Paroquets in 

 an orchard; and his brother-in-law saw the last in 1865 near 

 Ponime de Terre Creek in Franklin Co. On a recent tour 

 through Europe, Dr. Eimbeck, who has a fine specimen in his 

 collection of mounted birds, found only one individual in the 

 zoological gardens he visited (in Hamburg); he considers the 

 species nearly extinct. 



That the lower Missouri River from Omaha to its mouth was 

 once a favorite resort of large numbers of these beautiful and 



