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remarks as to suitable food after each species. In Macaws, as I

have said, I found form}'' scarlet and yellow, my Hyacintliine,.

and my blue and yellows, bread and milk in one tin, boiled

maize in another, and canary and hemp and (with a good deal

more hemp than canary), peanuts in a third, suited them very

well. My Spix, which is really more a Conure than a Macaw,,

will not look at sop of any sort, except sponge cake given from

one’s fingers, only drinks plain water, and lives mainly on sun¬

flower seed. It has hemp, millet, and canary, and peanuts, but I

do not think eats much of any of them. It barks the branches-

of the tree in which it is loose, and may eat the bark. It would

very likely be all the better if it would eat bread and milk, as it

might then produce some flight feathers, which it never yet lias

had. But I expect it would not eat any sop, even if I gave it

nothing else.


Now Conures I do not know much about, but I should,,

unless there were special reasons for something different, give

them only water, canary, hemp, millet and oats, and peanuts.

Some recommend fruit, but I find parrots care very little about

it. My two rare Amazons, I believe, were largely fed on banana

in Dominica. Augitsta will eat banana, but Bouqueti will not

look at it. They take the fruit, bite a bit, and then throw it

down. I find it difficult, too, to make parrots eat strawberries.

They evidently think them messy, for they shake their heads

violently over them when they taste them. I have known

parrots like them, but with me such parrots have proved the

exception.


To Brotogerys I should give millet, canary and oats, but Mr.

Phillipps will perhaps say what they ought to eat, as he has kept

many of them. I am not sure he has not told us, but away here

at Tarasp, I cannot refer to my Magazine.


Piomis and Chrysotis may have sunflower, hemp, canary,

millet, and peanuts, with rather more hemp than the others. I

always give mine bread and water sop. They do not eat more of

it than they want. If my experience is any guide, and I have

kept not a few parrots, no one need have the least fear of its

upsetting their digestions, or its leading to feather picking. I

have had a good deal to do with feather pickers, because I have

bought them, and borrowed them, to see if I could cure them.

I think I can say I have stopped one case, and that is about all

the success I have had. I have once—in all my experience of

parrots, now extending over a period of 45 years—seen a case of

feather picking that I think was due to improper feeding. The



