Some Colony Birds. 325 



♦Its name pagana must refer to its rustic appearance for the bird is 

 common in towns and in Georgetown its little pea-whistle, as I may call 

 it, is heard at intervals throughout the day. True to its name, however, 

 it remains unsophisticated. 



It has the habits of a fly-catcher, though one I once possessed sub- 

 sisted on a diet of bread and milk, fruit, etc. But this was due I think 

 to the excessive friendliness of a black-faced tanager which, as soon as I 

 put the stranger into the cage, flew to it and showed it signs of undis- 

 guised affection, caressing it and twittering to it. And thus it seemed to 

 speak : " Friend, take it not too much to heart that you are captive. 

 Captivity is not so base a thing as it may seem. Here we have whole- 

 some food in plenty, with neither hawks, nor cats, nor boys with stones 

 our souls to vex. The cage is large and there's a dozen perches. m And 

 see this wheel ! How nice it turns about ! And in this mirror's s ooth 

 and glassy surface, we see reflected our most noble selves . . . ." And 

 so the rustic tyrant-bird took heart of grace and lived contented. 



Parrots. 

 But I must no longer delay writing about parrots, the most intelli- 

 gent and in many respects, the most interesting of all the feathered tribes. 

 Of the five hundred species of this great family found in tropical coun- 

 tries throughout the world twenty-five or more belong to this colony 

 and include macaws, parrots (so-called), paroquets and love-birds. I may 

 say in passing that it is a fault of our language that we have to call, not 

 only parrots, parrots ; but the whole tribe of Psittacidae : macaws, cocka- 

 toos, lories, paroquets, love-birds and the rest. The same defect is found 

 in other departments of Zoology ; thus we call apes, baboons, gibbons, 

 and the rest, monkeys, as wed as monkeys proper. 



The word " parrot " is derived from the French i; pierrot " : the 

 French call the bird •' Little Peter," just as we call it " Pretty Poll." 

 Parrots have more brain, proportionately, than any other bird, and 

 their upper beak or maxilla, unlike that of any other bird except the 

 flamingo, is movable and not anchylosed to the skull. The tongue is 

 thick and generally black, the eye intelligent and the pupil often 

 highly dilatable. The feet, in common with cuckoos, toucan, wood- 

 peckers and a few others, are zygodactyl (Greek "yoked fingers") 

 having two claws before and two behind ; the outer claw is forced 

 back into what is evidently a primarily unnatural position. I might 

 remark that the word zygodactyly would be more applicable to the 

 chameleon, the claws of which are not only disposed in this way 

 but those before and those behind are actually joined together. 

 We have here an evident sign of evolution ; it was necessary for climbing- 

 birds to have as firm a grip behind as before and so nature accommo- 

 dated itself to their need. 



Evolution as an active force in organic beings is too evident to 

 every student of nature to be gainsaid ; but that it has effected all that 

 Darwinians would have us believe, is precisely what thinking men are 



