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CHAPTER L. 



PARROTS AND PARRAKEETS. 



The docility of the Parrots, the facility with which most kinds can be accustomed to cage -life, 

 and the talent of some species for imitating the human voice and pronouncing words or 

 sentences, have made Parrots favourite cage-birds, and sufficiently explain that, when America 

 was first discovered, they were found domesticated by the natives, and that tame Parrots have 

 been kept as pets by the natives of India from time immemorial. 



According to Dr. Finsch, Parrots were unknown to the ancient Israelites. The earliest 

 mention of Parrots to be found in ancient history occurs in the description of a festival which 

 took place in Alexandria, in Egypt, 284 B.C. In the time of Alexander the Great the first 

 Parrots were brought to Greece by a general returning from India. But Aristotle, classing the 

 " Psittace" with the birds of prey, evidently never saw a Parrot, and derived his scant information 

 from hearsay. Fifty years before Christ, Parrots were known to the Romans, for Parrots 

 are mentioned in writings of that date as brought from Syria. Pliny, A.D. 50, gave the 

 first description of some Parrots found by the emissaries of the Emperor Nero on the banks of 

 the Nile, and evidently Pal(Eornis torquaius, or the Ring-necked Parrakeet, is meant. Other 

 early writers mention India as the native country of Parrots, and say that the birds were 

 not eaten in India, but were held sacred on account of their ability to imitate the human 

 voice. 



In Rome, Parrots became articles of luxury at an early date, and the price of a Parrot 

 often exceeded that of a slave. During the feasts of the Emperor Antonius Heliogabalus, 

 dishes of cooked Parrot-heads were served,* and the same Emperor's lions were sometimes fed 

 with Peacocks and Parrots. It is nearly certain that the Romans knew no other kind than the 

 Ring-necked Parrakeet. From the first century of the Christian era, history is almost silent 

 on the subject of Parrots during 1,400 years. The Eastern trade had come into the hands 

 of the Venetians and of the Portuguese, and Parrots appear not to have been transported 

 by the tedious trade routes of the Middle Ages. In 1455 a Senegal Parrot was first heard of 

 in Europe. Towards the end of the fifteenth century (1498) the Portuguese circumnavigated 

 the Cape, and acquired during the next years a part of India, where tame Parrots were found 

 by them in many houses of natives. Columbus, too, had returned from his voyage of discovery 

 to America, and had brought Parrots with him when he held his solemn entry in Seville 

 on March 31, 1493. In England the first Parrots were shown as a great curiosity in 

 1504. A book of birds published in Zurich in 1557 mentions fourteen kinds of Parrots, 

 of which seven can be now recognised by the description published 342 years ago. As a 

 curiosity it may be mentioned that in 1707 a description and illustration of the great black 



* In Cuba and some West Indian Islands, parrot soup is at the present day a much-prized dis!i, 



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